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The Marlins, recently purchased an ownership group led by Derek Jeter, made the decision not to renew a team scout’s employment contract earlier this month while the scout, Marty Scott, was hospitalized waiting for a kidney transplant following colon cancer surgery, according to Jeff Passan at Yahoo.




Passan reports:

Marty Scott, who joined the Marlins as a vice president in 2011 and in recent years had worked as a scout, said he was told his contract would not be renewed Oct. 16 while at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Florida, where doctors three days earlier had removed a cancerous tumor and polyps from his colon. Doctors initially found the cancer in late August as Scott underwent a battery of tests in preparation for a kidney transplant needed because of diabetes.


A team statement to Passan said the decision not to renew Scott’s contract was made by president of baseball operations Michael Hill, who was retained from the Loria administration.



Jeter’s tenure as the owner of the Marlins has so far been defined by high-profile departures. He’s fired a handful of Marlins legends, he apparently fired Jeff Conine, Preston Wilson, and Rich Waltz from the Fox Sports Southwest broadcast team, and he seems poised to trade away franchise cornerstone Giancarlo Stanton.

Scott told Passan that he didn’t feel like Jeter or the Marlins owed him anything, but it’s still hard to imagine the cold calculation it takes for any organization to put a longtime employee through this:

Scott said he needed daily three-hour physical therapy sessions for weeks to return to health. During that time, he said, his Marlins-issued cell phone was shut off, which complicated extending his health insurance through COBRA. Eventually, he was able to secure the insurance, and as long as a follow-up appointment for the cancer surgery goes well this Monday, Scott said he hopes to schedule his kidney-transplant surgery in January.


Scott told Passan that he was informed of the decision by director of pro scouting Jim Cuthbert. He described the moment he saw Cuthbert’s number pop up on his caller ID: “My heart sank a little bit. At the same time, I thought, ‘They’re not going to do this while I’m in the hospital.’”