Kim Ng will not return as general manager of the Miami Marlins in 2024, chairman and principal owner Bruce Sherman announced Monday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Although the club exercised Ng’s team option to return for the 2024 season, she declined, Sherman said.
- Ng’s departure comes nearly two weeks since the Marlins reached the postseason for the first time in three years. Miami’s postseason was short-lived after it was defeated by the Philadelphia Phillies in two games in the Wild Card Series.
- However, it was a significant moment for Ng and baseball as she became the first female general manager to lead a major-league team to the playoffs.
- The Marlins hired Ng, MLB’s first female GM, in November 2020.
Ng’s shocking departure
Inside baseball, news of Ng’s departure was a shocking way to start the week. The team just made the playoffs for the first time in Ng’s tenure, and Ng had been around for only three seasons, a short time. What exactly went down isn’t yet clear, but there are early indications a contract dispute was involved. Per a Miami Herald report last month, Ng’s deal expired after this season.
Then, on Monday morning, Sherman said he had picked up the Marlins’ side of a mutual option for 2024, but Ng declined to exercise her end of it. (Both parties need to agree when a mutual option is in play.) Ng might not have wanted to return without security beyond one more season, without a multiyear deal. What wasn’t immediately known, however, is where any presumed discussions around a long-term extension fell apart. — Evan Drellich, MLB senior writer
What’s next?
In the end, Ng’s exit brings a surprising end to the tenure of the first woman to titularly run a baseball operations group in a sport, a major development in a sport where front offices have long been homogenous and effectively exclusionary.
Her exit also puts her old team in the mix for a new department head, creating potential competition for the Boston Red Sox in that quest. And Ng, obviously, is free to take a job somewhere else. — Drellich
What they’re saying
“We thank Kim for her contributions during her time with our organization and wish her and her family well,” Sherman said in a statement.
Sherman added that the team’s search for “new leadership” begins immediately.
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(Photo: Sam Navarro / USA Today)
