Offishial News, 1/29/24: Skip Schumaker's NL Manager of the Year speech

🔹 The defending Caribbean Series champions, Tigres del Licey, defeated Estrellas Orientales on Saturday to clinch the Dominican Winter League title and earn an opportunity to repeat at this week's tournament. Ageless former Marlin Emilio Bonifácio played a major role in helping them get there. Tiburones de La Guaira clinched the Venezuelan title on Sunday. One of my personal favorites, Harold Ramírez, is a starting outfielder for them. Fish On First will be providing extensive Caribbean Series coverage here.

🔹 Elsewhere around baseball, the Tigers extended infield prospect Colt Keith (6/$28.6M). The deal could cover up to nine years if all club options are exercised. Keith is the seventh player to a receive a pre-debut contract extension of this nature and the second one this offseason, joining Jackson Chourio of the Brewers. Free agent Héctor Neris (1/$9M) signed with the Cubs, Adam Ottavino (1/$4.5M) signed with the Mets and Alex Wood (financials not yet reported) signed with the Athletics.

🔹 Kevin Barral asked A.J. Puk about competing for a starting rotation spot and his thoughts on the Marlins' front office changes. Kevin also wrote the first of our team-by-team Caribbean Series previews, leading off with Mexico.

🔹 Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald wrote about the critical relationship between Peter Bendix and Skip Schumaker.

  🔹 Bendix divulged more about his personal life in the final part of his interview with MLB.com's Christina De Nicola. He's an alum of Cleveland Heights High School, graduating a few years ahead of Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

🔹 Schumaker dressed up and jetted up to New York to accept his 2023 NL Manager of the Year award. Watch his full speech below.

🔹 For the first time in 2024, we're preparing a Marlins Jeopardy contest! Can't do it without a category of your audience questions. Submit them here for a chance to be featured on the show.

🔹 The Prospects 1500 staff ranked the top 50 Marlins prospects.

🔹 And lastly, congratulations to Parker Heyser. He is the winner of our SuperSub Eury Pérez jersey giveaway. We are immensely appreciative of everybody who has SuperSub'd through the first 10 days of our new site's existence! We'll do our best to make it a worthwhile investment throughout the year with more periodic giveaways like this.

Marlins Podcast Episodes