The Marlins, now tied for last place in their division with a 49-60 record after an offseason of free agent extravagances, are evaluating what went wrong. “We set ourselves up for it,’’ Marlins president David Samson said, according to Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. But owner Jeffrey Loria is “angry, and he should be,” according to Samson. Here are more Marlins-related notes from Samson:
- Samson wouldn’t say whether the Marlins will lower payroll next year, but he said last month’s Hanley Ramirez trade wasn’t about saving money. “Not one trade that was done was payroll-motivated,’’ Samson said.
- Changes to the front office and on-field staff can’t be ruled out, Samson said. It’ll be up to Loria to evaluate manager Ozzie Guillen and the rest of the coaching staff, according to Samson. Guillen is in the first year of a four-year contract.
- Samson assumed most of the responsibility for the team's disappointing season. He mentioned president of baseball operations Larry Beinfest and general manager Michael Hill as two others who share the blame.
- The Marlins will consider adding key players through trades and free agency this offseason, Samson said, according to Joe Capozzi of the Palm Beach Post. However, the Marlins won’t match last offseason’s spending spree.
Wow, the Marlins front office is just full of liars, huh?
Also, can they fire Ozzie so that the Red Sox can fire Bobby and hire him? That would just be the best thing ever.
I hope you’re joking about Guillen. He and Beckett will have a fist fight before the first week of ST is over.
Would’ve made this season a lot more fun to watch, anyway!
and thats how you break the mlb ratings record.
No, it would be great theater. They can then hire Roger McDowell as a pitching coach, John Rocker as special advisor to the GM, and maybe bring in Mario Mendoza to help with the hitters.
Gawd, I hope that you’re joking about the Sox hiring Ozzie. I’d want the Red Sox to have nothing to do with the Ozzie train wreck!
I can’t conceive of how entertaining that would’ve been to watch this season.
Seriously, they should do it and have a camera crew follow Ozzie around 24/7. MLB would see their best TV ratings ever. I’d watch.
Dude “Ozzie in Boston” would be the best reality show ever.
You cant buy a team and expect to win the WS easily, and If it doesnt work did what Marlins did, you have to wait, its their firts year. Its like Girardi, his first time in NY, miss the playoffs, next year(knowing better the team) the won the WS. Its about quemistry, getting know each other…
Yeah.. except Miami doesn’t have the same talent as New York.. and rarely does New York sell off players at the deadline.
It is about chemistry, and that’s something the Marlins completely lack. With Ozzie running the show, it’s just gonna be a complete circus.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Marlins are in dead last, even with all the talent they brought in, yet the ChiSox are in a pennant race with a new manager and coming off an offseason w/o any FA splashes.
Yeah, but remember who won in 2005? chemistry needs time, even if that means a complete season…
The part where they added free agents Mark Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia actually probably mattered a lot more than Girardi “knowing the team better.” So actually I guess you can kind of buy a team and expect that.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I laughed at “quemistry.” It is kind of like “strategery” and “insinuendo”.
They did it for the wrong reasons and it came back to bite them.
If a team wants to make huge expenditures like this, that’s fine — but it should be pieces to put them over the top, not “look at me guys, I have a new stadium and the ugliest uniforms ever created!” The Twins did something similar when their stadium opened, and they are suffering a similar fate.
How Loria is allowed to own a team is beyond me. The corruption of Selig and his cronies makes me absolutely sick.
I agree. Why didn’t Loria stay with the Expos and go to Washington ? Because Selig wanted baseball to flourish in DC and die in Miami. That is why he made sure Loria was sent here to ruin any chance for baseball to become big here. No one trusts Loria, no one likes him. Hence people just refuse to go to the games. I’m tired of people from outside of South Florida critisizing the fans for being SMART and not going. We know better than those outside how bad an owner Loria is, and we get called bad fans, but I tell you we are GOOD ones actually, we just won’t support a team owned by Loria
you build a team, you don’t buy one.
signed the 2009 Yankees.
the marlins had a decent core in place (stanton, jj, lomo, a.sanchez, hanley) and supplemented it with FA signings, some of which were very questionable (see: bell, heath, and buck, john). that they tried to “buy” a team is not the problem, the problem is that they overpaid for marginal upgrades in bell and buck.
I just can’t help but think that the whole Marlins/Ozzie relationship is going to end badly. Too many explosive personalities. The vast under performence is going to be evaluated at the end of the season. Some, if not most of the blame will likely be accredited to Ozzies managerial style. If Ozzie does get released from his duties as manager, then this might be the first and only time I find myself empathizing with him.
Just because Guillen waltzed into town and peeved off 20% of the population before he had managed a game is no reason to fire that loudmouth was it? 🙁
That just means some of the “local” fans are in love with loudmouths I reckon’…
While they may want to be hard on themselves, few thought Heath Bell would implode, and they are in a super tough division.
Everyone at the time said the Heath Bell signing was a bad deal. His velocity was down and his pitchers were missing more.
Not about money?!?
That’s a crock!
They held onto LEE because they wanted 2.5 mil from the NYY above what he was getting paid, by the Astros. They’re paying LEE the prorated minimum.
Miami should not only sue the Marlins but MLB as well for getting conned into a stadium deal.
I was just about to write the same thing. How can you say, “Not one trade that was done was payroll-motivated” when you tried to trade an essentially free player for cash?
Have you seen Hanley’s stats since he was traded ? Have you seen his attitude ? Trust me, they saw a sucker in the Dodgers and I don’t blame them for getting him out. Most Marlins fans are actually happy about it. The trade that irked most Marlins fans was Anibal Sanchez, they never offered him a contract, yet he actually has been the best pitcher we’ve had for the last few years (because JJ has been hurt). The to trade him for unproven talent was just horrible.
You do realize I was talking about Carlos Lee right? Anyway they didn’t exactly find a sucker in the Dodgers. The Dodgers didn’t give up much for Hanley and Choate anyway. I could say the samething about Eovaldi that you said about Hanley: have you seen his stats since being traded? That is not the point though. The point is that the Marlins were certainly making deals with their, “mind on their money and their money on their mind.”
another OUTSIDER that doesn’t know – the stadium isn’t being paid for by LOCAL taxpayers, but by you good folks who visit South Fla. A Hotel Bed Tax of $ 1 for every $ 100 on hotel rooms since 2002 has paid for the stadium.
Money that could be put to better use.
It’s not about the money. It’s about…..sending a message. Everything Burns!
I cannot understand the Marlins. They build a team that on paper had some potential, with a few question marks (will Zambrano go crazy again? How about Guillen? Will Hanley Ramirez respond well to third base? Are the personalities going to mesh well?).
They did some crazy things in the off season, signing Buehrle and Heath Bell made no sense at all (contracts to closers are almost never worth the money, nor are contracts to soft tossing, old lefties) and bringing in Zambrano was a massive risk due to his tendency to go insane on and off the field.
Then you factor In the new stadium, in a new city, and the Marlins tendency to dump talent and salary. They were trying to make their mark, say they were for real, you can trust us to be around, et cetera.
But they didn’t even give the team a full season! Worse yet, they trade for an under performing, old, expensive Carlos Lee, then TWO WEEKS LATER trade away Hanley Ramirez. Wut? You say you think you can make a run, then two weeks later explode the team? Wtf happened in those two weeks that didn’t happen two weeks prior? Did they really go for Lee thinking that “oh we will probably lose and explode the team anyways”? Why would you even trade for Lee, then?
Nothing the Marlins has done has made sense. They have merely reinforced the notion that they are quick to unload talent and salary at a drop of the hat, that fans shouldn’t trust them, and that their front office has no direction or plan.
if it was not about money then hanley would be playing for oakland who offered better players
What was the offer?
michael choice and dan straily the A’s were checking on his hand problem and the dodgers came in and offered to take his contract the A’s were only going to take half so that would tell me it was about money
Source?
Doubt that was really on the table. Any link?
susan slusser was on mlb network show called the rundown i will see if i can find it
The A’s turned down the deal, not the Marlins.
The Marlins need to get rid of the front office and coaching staff. This front office has done nothing for 10 years. They got lucky once with a WS on their first year, but since then, nothing. And the coaching staff, my goodness it’s terrible. Pitching has gone down the toilet. Hitting is completely gone. Fielding sucks. With this team’s performance compared to expectations, how any one of them can keep their job is beyond me. I guess nepotism must have something to do with it for the hitting coach.
And if they can, they really should look into getting rid of Jeffrey Loria. Maybe MLB can step in and fix this mess.
Selig created this, so I doubt he steps in to fix it. Selig made sure Loria came to Miami instead of Washington. We know why, Washington has 8,000,000 and Miami/South Fla 5,000,000…..as usual its all about the money. 3,000,000 more people can pay for more merchandise and more tickets.
Obviously the plan to contend in the stadium’s opening year was too
aggressive and failed miserably, but I have to give them credit for
making sensible moves now to deal with the consequences of their earlier
actions.
After the foolishness of acquiring Carlos Lee, the Marlins recovered to make some nifty moves at the deadline. Dumping Hanley’s entire contract while getting a top pitching prospect (Eovaldi) was a fantastic move, as was picking up Zack Cox (now Miami’s future starting 3B) for Mujica. Getting Turner *and* Brantly from the Tigers was a steal, given that they weren’t going to resign Sanchez and didn’t need Infante with Bonifacio around to play second.
The backloaded part of the deals given to Reyes and Buehrle kicks in after 2013, so they had to get some young, cost-controlled talent to fill the impending holes to be left by Josh Johnson and Ricky Nolasco. They’ll have Eovaldi and Turner in the rotation and Cox at 3B next year. With Bonifacio in the infield, they can grab a solid free-agent CF (there are several available) and they’ll be in good shape to be an improved team in 2013.
You are spot on dude. Next year I will expect to make a surprise run at a WC. Nationals will be winning this division for the next 4 or 5 years it looks like.
The entire Marlins deadline was about saving money and saving face.
Loria is lying!!!!!
The reason many said they were the biggest deadline loser is because all of their moves were strictly $$$ related.
I don’t know what to say really. I knew that they were going to fail, they had too many question marks, hiring Ozzie was a bad idea, they gave too much money to 3 players who didn’t deserve it.
Mistakes:
1. Heath Bell 3 years 27 million. First off, way too much even if he had produced the way he was supposed to.
2. Ozzie Guillen. What was the plan really, because he is Venezuelan he is going to be the perfect fit for a latino group of players and media. The guy simply attracts way too much attention mostly bad, why on earth would anybody want that really, a manager should not attract attention, that’s the point.
3. Carlos Zambrano. Well he is Venezuelan so Ozzie will fix him. How’s that working out for you.
Wow, you knew huh ? Why didn’t you tell every one back then ? Hindsight is always 20/20.