Hill: Marlins aren’t content just to get into the playoffs

CHICAGO

Michael Hill was in his second year with the Marlins’ front office the last time the franchise reached the postseason.

He still remembers the National League Championship Series and the eight-run inning in the pivotal Game 6 win that kept them alive (On the infamous Steve Bartman incident, Hill said, “Everybody will have their own opinion. I don’t think the ball was catchable, myself.”). He remembers the celebration at Yankee Stadium 11 days later when the Marlins won their second World Series title in as many postseason attempts.

It has been 17 years since those moments. Hill is still here, now in his seventh year as president of baseball operations.

And, for the last 16, the Marlins have gone without those moments.

“Feels too long,” Hill said.

The drought ends Wednesday when the Marlins make their postseason return at 2 p.m. in a bestof-3 wild card series against the same Cubs team they beat in the

NLCS way back when.

The Marlins secured the spot in the playoffs Friday at Yankee Stadium with an extra-inning win over the New York Yankees.

“It was a pretty special moment,” Hill said. “Personally, I just had to take a step back and take a deep breath because it’s been a long time coming and a lot of blood, sweat and tears going into this.”

The moment comes in the midst of the third year of the team’s rebuild under the Bruce Sherman/ Derek Jeter ownership group and during a 60game, pandemic-shortened season. It provides validation internally that the team is heading in the right direction after going 120203 over the previous two seasons as the organization prioritized depth and sustainability. “When we report to spring training every year, our goal is to win championships,” Hill said, “and it is truly a tremendous accomplishment to get to the playoffs given what we had to endure this season. ... But we said it as soon as our ticket got punched that this is just the start. We’re not just happy to be here.

“It’s a race to 13 wins,” Hill added, “and to be the last team standing when it’s all said and done.”

INSTRUCTIONAL LEAGUE

While the Marlins’ bigleague club begins a playoff race, many of their up-and-coming prospects will be in action at the team’s spring training facility in Jupiter.

The Marlins began a month-long instructional league on Saturday that includes 45 prospects who are not on the team’s 40man roster.

For 40 of those players, this will be their first organization-instructed workouts since the coronavirus pandemic because there was no minor-league season this year.

“We have a lot of players that we consider to be very top-of-the-line prospects,” Jeter said. “I think there’s been so much attention paid to what’s going on at the major-league level that I think sometimes people lose sight of the fact that you have a lot of minorleague layers who missed the entire year.”

Thirteen of the Marlins’ top-30 prospects according to MLB Pipeline will take part in the camp. Newly acquired outfielder Griffin Conine, the son of Mr. Marlin Jeff Conine, is also part of the group.

ESPN on Monday announced its TV and radio broadcast assignments for the seven wild card series its family of networks will cover. Jon Sciambi, Chipper Jones and Jesse Rogers will call the MarlinsCubs series for TV.

Kevin Brown and Jim Bowden have the radio call for Wednesday.