One Regend

That's a lot of fancy words for "We're not getting anything but the cheapest reclamation projects on the market." To me, this is all just Lip Service. That is all I can say to describe what Peter Bendix just told us. Peter Bendix. Please don't lie to your team's fans. We all know what you're really doing. Just gut the team, give the team no reinforcements, and get the painfully awful season done and overwith. The team isn't going to be competitive in 2025, and it might not even be competitive in 2026. Be honest what your game plan is. It's not like this team was historically ever above fielding unwatchable products on the field. Just get it overwith quickly, and get it out of the system.

He might've had a chance, if the Marlins didn't trade for 1B/DH type prospects like Agustin Ramirez and Deyvision De Los Santos while still having Jake Burger and Jonah Bride on their roster.

Juan Soto alone isn't going to make this team good. We'd need like Juan Soto and like 5-6 other bats... and like 3 starting pitchers... and like 5 bullpen arms. We're so far from being competitive that just one elite bat isn't going to do anything for us. If the Marlins went and got Juan Soto, we'd be like the 2001-2003 Texas Rangers again. One GOATed player and 22 other flotsams and jetsams.

Basically this. I'd rather have a couple stinker years like this past year and probably next year (I can also see us losing 100+ games next year) and then play in the playoffs the next few years after, than perenially hang around slightly under .500 accomplishing exactly nothing every year like we had been from 2004-2017. At least with this game plan, we have a chance to stumble into a World Series championship.

Losing Maldonado was a mistake the Marlins made that the Athletics should benefit from. You don't lose a career MiLB 10.5+ K/9 guy for nothing just because he's reliant on a slider. I need to remind you that this team relied on Steven Okert for three years. If that's the team's excuse for a poor decision, it was a bad excuse.

Hard disagree on the Ozuna trade. The Cardinals got 2 mediocre years out of Ozuna and Ozuna left in Free Agency. Anything after that is irrelevant to the trade. The Marlins won that trade by a landslide.

Honestly, the real loss here was Anthony Maldonado. He had a 3.80 FIP which tells me he pitched better than his bloated ERA and WHIP suggested, A lot of it was bad batted ball luck and one of the worst defenses in baseball behind him letting him down on every play. He also uncharacteristically had a low K/9, scoring 5.2 in his MLB appearances rather than the 10.5+ K/9 he routinely performed in the minors. That was a clear outlier stat and I'll showcase why below. That's a lot of red for someone with results as disastrous as they were. The Athletics should benefit very heavily from the Marlins folly here.

To me, it does not matter what manager is chosen, as long as they're able to maintain control of the clubhouse and make the team play hard. (IE: Don't be the Chicago White Sox) It's going to be a tank year regardless of who's chosen. And 2025 isn't going to be any better. If anything, no matter who gets chosen, they're likely to be fired whenever the team actually gets good, and replaced by an active real manager focused on winning. (Again, don't be the White Sox here.) Either way, it's going to be a brutal next two years. Buckle up.

I'm a bit surprised at Munoz being left on waivers. I thought they would have cut Sixto Sanchez instead of exposing him to the waiver wire. I know it was a rough season for Munoz, but they really didn't need to give up on him so soon. He had a good changeup (well good relative to the results he got with the rest of his arsenal) and a slider with potential, and an upper echelon fastball velo. Just a few offseason refinements and he could have had potential for us. Just another instance of the Marlins giving up on a young player too soon.

The question will be if Jakob Junis would even accept a Minor League deal with a Spring Training invite after having what seems to be a career year. I'd lean towards no, honestly.

I could also see the Marlins squeeze someone off the 40-man just to protect Dax. It's going to be a lost year anyways, so what's one dead 40 man slot gonna hurt? If they were actually competing, I would see otherwise. The extra player I'd then cut would probably be Vidal Brujan. He had a hot first 2 months, but ended up playing himself out of baseball since. Luzardo is all but a lock to be traded. Braxton Garrett might get some rumors as well. If Edward Cabrera overperforms, he's definitely getting traded at the deadline. I think Sandy might stay because Sherman needs some name to stay on the team so he can get jersey and ticket sales, but I imagine he's gone the moment a rising star arrives from the farm system. I'd have to say Ely is being extremely generous by calling this a 70 win team. I could see this team having a worse record than we did in 2024. But if we do, I'd say it's part of the plan.

We're seeing red flags from De Los Santos, which is starting to concern me as far as his future goes. Now his ceiling is starting to look more and more like Javier Baez, while his floor... yeesh, I'd rather not think about his floor. Luis Cova looks promising, but his "excellent swing decisions" did not yield results, which gives me concerns about his quality of contact. Sure, he has a great OBP, but it's not hard to achieve that in rookieball where 16-17 year olds are a lot more wild, so I'm not expecting him to translate that to the higher levels of minors. Migliaccio seems like a roll of the dice. Honestly, results at the MLB level do not matter unless it's a highly-regarded prospect. I'd like to see him get to work where his impact will be much more important, which is AA and AAA. We've had too many former highly-touted prospects flame out by the time they get here. I expect him to improve on this problem. Also, fun fact. Alex Vesia was traded for Dylan Floro. -We gave up on Alex Vesia too early. The Marlins traded him out of panic, looking for a stable arm. Floro was okay, but he had no impact on 2021 and 2022 and was gone halfway through the playoff 2023 team. -We traded Floro when he was at the lowest value in 2023, when in 2022, the fourth-place team (Marlins) had an opportunity to trade him while he was still outperforming his peripherals. -Still, the best package we could've gotten out of 2022 Dylan Floro would pale in comparison to the package we could've gotten out of Vesia now, had we had kept him around. He'd enter his second arb year by now and becomes a Free Agent in 2027. We could've had a better haul than we ended up getting from AJ Puk, and I expect Vesia to be one of the priciest free agent relief pitchers in 2027. Huge missed opportunity. That is, what I'd like to call, a classic Kim Ng masterclass.

I have sincere doubts about the Marlins if they weren't able to secure a deal with a much less appealing option in Craig Albernaz. Something tells me next season is going to be somehow worse than last season.

One thing I never understood with the previous regime was their strange attachment to Miguel Rojas. For reasons that only some kind of diety would comprehend, Miguel Rojas was rewarded the "Team Captain" role. A guy in his mid-30s whose future was going to be on the bench, being given the Team Captain role. This created so many more problems when it came to team construction, because surely the Marlins weren't going to trade away a Team Captain, not especially in the middle of the season, and they certainly wasn't going to bench the Team Captain when he's playing poorly. They finally ended up doing so, in the end. It took Miguel Rojas having a truly dismal 68 wRC+ for them to finally pull the plug. But by that time, it was far too little too late. To respond to some of your pieces: Joe Mack has at least started to show some promise this year. Even if it felt a little BABIP-happy, it's still more progress than what his initial struggles would suggest. He at least still has a chance to put it together for the Marlins. As for Connor Scott and Khalil Watson? Yeah, there's no saving those. Those are draft busts through and through Jazz was good, but not elite for us. It took Jazz Chisholm Jr being traded to New York for Jazz to finally turn into the superstar the Marlins and their fans dreamt he would be in their organization. He might end up being an elite player for New York, just... not for us. Also, speaking of international drafts, we should also not neglect to mention Edward Cabrera. To me, he is the most headache-inducing name to ever be put on any of the Marlins rosters. He has so much incredible talent, yet the Marlins for some reason or another can't seem to get him to tap into his potential. He is one of those names that, once he gets traded, he'll click and turn into a superstar on another team, because they'll figure him out whereas we still haven't.

Neither of them are a good choice IMO. But it's going to be a tank year or two, so the manager choice doesn't matter, so long as they establish a culture. Either way, both of them would have been replaced for a real manager if their player core develops.

You mean the same guy that marinated in the failure of Lewis Brinson, Isan Diaz, Monte Harrison, Jorge Alfaro, Lewin Diaz, and the like? You know, our "top prospects" from that time frame? How does this help us?

Who are we playing at 3rd base? Jake Burger is third baseman in name-only. Connor Norby was a disaster at 3rd base. De Los Santos is a first baseman period. And playing Otto Lopez at 3rd Base means you're playing Xavier Edwards at Shortstop which is just as terrible. What do you think are our internal options at 3rd base? Because I sure don't see them.

Miguel Andujar's defense in LF is dreadfully bad. -1 DRS and -7 OAA for a position that's less defensively demanding is not what you want for a team in a rebuild. I'd rather see Connor Norby there. While he also has defensive questions, he's far younger, more controllable, and has more offensive upside. We could get Harrison Bader, yes, but is he that much better than Victor Mesa Jr? Sure, he has outstanding defense, but that's literally all he has going for him. I'd rather not pay the extra money for him, and I'd personally run Victor Mesa Jr out there. We can't keep him toiling in AAA for a team that's likely going to lose another 100+ games. Might as well see what he's got left in the tank.

We don't have a third baseman. At all. Norby isn't a third baseman. Neither is De Los Santos. And Otto Lopez is a bench player at best who's likely to play SS instead. Yoan Moncada wouldn't be a bad signing. He's a low risk signing, and if we accidently'd elite production out of him, we can flip him at the deadline to acquire more prospects. We reached rock bottom in 2024, so we can't get that much lower than we did.

If we end up losing George Lombard to a poverty franchise like the White Sox, then what does that say about us as a franchise? The Marlins need to do better with their negotiations, because what they're doing now clearly isn't working.

I see no value in Derek Hill. Might as well see what Victor Mesa Jr has in the tank. I see Stowers and Dane Myers as COF types. Either way, it's going to be a tank year. So we're not going anywhere regardless of what moves the needle.

I wish both teams could lose the World Series and no winner was decided. If I was held at gunpoint though, and I was forced to pick between the Yankees and Dodgers, I'd pick the Yankees. And it's not because of the team itself. I could care less about the Yankees. I'd pick them because I'd like Jazz to win a world series ring.

That is also a valid concern. There were way too many staff being vetted on personal connections in the Jeter era and it costed us with an ineffective staff, and led to an ineffective product on the field. If there's a better candidate than George Lombard, I'd happily take one, but if these are the only two choices, I'd rather take Lombard as it would lead to a less disastrous circus.

I don't have a problem with women being an on-field authority if they're actually good at their jobs. It would only make sense to hire them over men if they are actually better than their male contemporary. It only becomes a problem if they're only hired solely as a PR stunt. George Lombard has a lot of baseball knowledge. If he doesn't land a job with the Marlins and the Marlins go the PR route, I'm going to take this team less seriously than I already do. (which was already not much to begin with) Kim Ng worked out well for them. But I have questions about Rachel Balkovec, and I definitely have questions about this one.

Otto Lopez's snub is unfortunate, but understandable. Francisco Lindor's snub, on the other hand, was a crime on humanity.