Marlins hire Vinesh Kanthan as director of baseball operations

[Ely Sussman]

Peter Bendix's front office is gradually filling out, with news breaking Tuesday afternoon that the Miami Marlins are hiring Vinesh Kanthan to be their new director of baseball operations, according to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald and Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. "Kanthan will be involved in all aspects of baseball operations, with a focus on Major League operations and interdepartmental collaboration," Christina De Nicola of MLB.com specifies.

Kanthan worked alongside Bendix in the baseball operations department of the 2017 and 2018 Tampa Bay Rays. He spent the five seasons since then with the Texas Rangers, most recently as their assistant director of baseball ops. So this constitutes a promotion for Kanthan.

The Rangers media guide describes Kanthan as having had "a heavy role" in building out the club's sports science lab and Arizona-based performance center "in an effort to create competitive advantages." More recently, he assisted in a wide variety of areas including roster management, contract negotiations and the salary arbitration process. Levi Weaver of The Athletic reported in greater detail about the latter and Kanthan's role in preserving the Rangers' decades-long streak of avoiding hearings with their arb-eligible players (for comparison's sake, the Marlins went to two hearings in 2023 alone).

Side note: We recently set up a Super Subscriber-only channel within the Marlins Discord server. That will give you access to Kanthan's complete media guide bio!

Here is Rangers bench coach Donnie Ecker endorsing the Kanthan hire:

https://twitter.com/donald_ecker/status/1729622264449040823

Kanthan is Sri Lankan American. As part of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in 2021, he released this statement through the Rangers about what it's like being a minority in the baseball industry:

Outside of baseball, Kanthan is a "superb pickleball player," Evan Grant tweets, hence my photo choice above.

The Marlins are retaining all three of the assistant general managers that Bendix inherited (Brian Chattin, Dan Greenlee and Oz Ocampo). Kanthan will report to them, according to De Nicola.

Photo courtesy of babolatpickleball/Instagram

 

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