Jeter wants Marlins to become winners

MIAMI >> Derek Jeter stood and chatted a few rows from home plate in Marlins Park on Monday morning. His words were sometimes drowned out by noises coming from construction crews; steel clanging against steel in an area getting built behind the center field wall, or the whirring of engines moving heavy machinery about.

There couldn’t have been a more fitting backdrop.

Jeter, entering his second full season as CEO of the Miami Marlins, knows that building — whether it is a new spot for fans to watch games from, to a minorleague system, to a contending big-league club — takes time. That also means Jeter is being tested in ways now that he never was during his playing days as shortstop

for the New York Yankees, when winning and competing for titles seemed like an annual occurrence.

“I have no patience,” Jeter said. “I have zero patience. I’ve been preaching it. I don’t have it.”

The Marlins had the worst record in the National League and the fourth-worst record in all of Major League Baseball last season, and just traded away the best player from their 2018 club — catcher J.T. Realmuto — to the Philadelphia Phillies. And oddsmakers say the Marlins will be one of the longest shots in baseball this year, which didn’t amuse Jeter.

He’s clearly not expecting to get his hands on the World Series trophy this year.

That doesn’t mean he’s accepting another woebegone year as a foregone conclusion, either.

“Patience is something that you have to learn,” Jeter said. “But I’m fine with not being patient. It’s like I say: When you’re at the major-league level, you’re here for a reason, because these players have been better than most other players in this country and in other countries as well. And if you’re here, you have an opportunity to win. I can’t preach that enough.”