“I don’t understand, why would they do that?”
I dont’ know, this is literally too “inside baseball” for me, but IIRC the Chicago Bulls basically did the same thing after Michael Jordan departed, or maybe his leaving was part of it, but as I recall they sort of self-deconstructed, it seemed weird.
But, I’m a girl from New York so I might be wrong, someone will correct me if I am.
Pro sports teams do sometimes de-construct and rebuild, but not usually in such extreme ways as the Marlins tend to do. It’s one thing to shed top players at the end of their careers, when you know things can’t continue much longer anyway, but in the case of Stanton he’s right in the prime of his career.