No school of fish
There’s a stream of optimism coming from Marlins brass. A condensed 60-game season has thrown conventional wisdom to the wind, and Miami thinks it can compete with the rest of the league.
“In general, in the baseball world, if you’d say, ‘Hey, the Marlins have as good a chance as anyone,’ people wouldn’t necessarily believe that — you’d still look at the teams and the names and everything else,” said manager Don Mattingly on Wednesday. “But in a short season, guys get hot, pitchers get hot, momentum gets going, and anything can happen…
“I think we’re all in the mode of ‘we’re going to go for it.’ ”
Tuesday, Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill shared a similar sentiment.
“The message to our guys is that, ‘Why not us?’ ” Hill said. “Why can’t the Marlins be a team that’s competing for the division title and playoffs as we restart this thing?”
Whether that sentiment is rooted more in hope or belief, the re-framing of priorities matters on its own. And it comes with ripple effects.
For years the organization has painstakingly bulked up its farm system — and to laudable success. According to MLB.com’s rankings, Miami holds
the fourth-best farm system, a product of a rapid accumulation of talent through trades and the draft since CEO Derek Jeter took over the franchise.
That emphasis has come at the expense of onfield performance. That Marlins are 120-203 over the last two seasons. Only the Tigers and Orioles have a worse record during that span.
But much of the organization’s top talent now resides near the Major League level, with nine of the team’s top 10 prospects at or above the AA level, and a 10th (JJ Bleday, the team’s 2019 first-round pick out of Vanderbilt) widely regarded to be a quick riser. In a normal year, this might have been a season primed to break some of these prospects into the major league club throughout the year without the pressure of winning immediately.
But with an expressed desire to “go for it,” Miami now finds itself at a crossroads in that plan.
“That’s the line you walk,” Mattingly said. “If you talk about our upperlevel prospects, you’re walking the fine line of what we’re trying to do here. Everybody’s in a playoff push, and every team feels the same way. Anything can happen in a 60-game season. Balancing that with continuing to develop your guys.”
Most of Miami’s top prospects will still be involved in the 2020 season in some capacity, with all of the aforementioned top-10 prospects listed on the team’s initial 60-man roster, and first-round pick Max Meyer expected to be added once he officially inks his contract.
But their inclusion alone does little to combat the complications of losing a year of normal development at a crucial point in their careers. A team that’s “going for it” might not entrust a rookie in an important mid-season start; it might not have the patience for a young position player still working through troubles at the plate; and it won’t have access to the minor league levels as a means of rebuilding confidence.
There are only so many innings to go around. And if this truly becomes a pennant race, those innings will likely go elsewhere.
Those trickle-down effects are felt most acutely among those who did not make the roster and, as of now, have no organized baseball to turn to as the minor leagues canceled their seasons Tuesday because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Really disappointed with that,” Mattingly said, “because you know where our organization has been going, (vice president of player development and scouting Gary Denbo) and the developmental staff have done a tremendous job developing our prospects and all the things that goes along with that. And you know, not playing does not make guys better.”