Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Marlins to focus on pitching at meetings
MIAMI — In an effort to heat up the Hot Stove, the Miami Marlins are headed to the cold.
Miami’s decision-makers will be in National Harbor, Md., tonight night through Thursday for baseball’s Winter Meetings, an annual gathering of the league’s front offices and others that tends to spur trades and free-agent signings. That could be especially true this year, with action slowed by uncertainty surrounding the collective-bargaining agreement until MLB and the players’ union finished a new labor deal this past week.
At his introduction at Marlins Park on Thursday, Edinson Volquez had hardly finished buttoning his brand-new jersey before president of baseball operations Michael Hill made it clear fans should expect more moves in the coming days and weeks.
“We’re not done,” Hill said. “We plan to be active [at the Winter Meetings] and continue to find ways to add more pitching depth to this club.
“We really believe strongly in the ability of our position players, and we want to add as much pitching as we can to have every opportunity to be successful.”
Consider that a one-sentence summary of the daunting task facing the Marlins this week and this offseason: Surrounding the Marlins’ young core — their “championship-caliber” core, as Hill has described it — with enough pitching to make the team competitive in a world without Jose Fernandez, who died in a September boat crash. Although there are more items on Miami’s winter to-do list, such as choosing a backup catcher, starting and relief pitching will be the team’s focus at the Winter Meetings.
Hill indicated the Marlins are casting a wide net, and the multitude of reports linking the club to mid-rotation-to-back-end arms supports that. Miami has been connected to Jason Hammel, Doug Fister, Jonathan Niese, Dillon Gee and C.J. Wilson, all veteran arms who won’t command huge contracts.
This free-agent class of starting pitchers is a weak one — Rich Hill, who nearly threw a perfect game against the Marlins for the Los Angeles Dodgers in September, is the No. 1 target remaining — and the Marlins don’t have many quality prospects they could dangle as trade bait. That means the team’s best rotation options are the sort of pitcher described and named above.
The relief market is more difficult to predict, especially with roughly 100 percent of major league teams also looking for bullpen help. Although the Marlins have also been linked to free-agent closer Kenley Jansen, who played for manager Don Mattingly on the Dodgers, they seem unlikely to be willing to pay for any of the three highend relievers: Jansen, Aroldis Chapman and Mark Melancon.
The Marlins have the option of subtracting from their position-player nucleus to bolster the pitching staff, but Hill has been steady in his responses to those inquiries: If a team wants, say, All-Star outfielder Marcell Ozuna, that team better be ready to pay the price.
“I’m not upset when I get the phone calls about Ozuna or any of our position players,” Hill said. “We’ve been through it before. We have good players. People should call you on those players. But we’re trying to win here. Our goal is to bring a championship back here. And you need good players to do that.”
That leaves Hill and the rest of the front office with a difficult task: adding pitching without subtracting hitting.
“That is the goal. It’s not easy,” Hill said. “Given some of the trades we’ve made over the years, we’ve depleted our [farm] system, so it’s difficult.”
The Marlins’ 2017 monetary commitments are already climbing toward $100 million — a considerable increase from the $74.4 million Opening Day payroll last season — and it’s unclear how much higher owner Jeffrey Loria is willing to go.
“We’ve been given marching orders,” Hill said. “As you can see, I haven’t been given orders to have to move anything off of our club. We’re trying to add to it and build on the success that we had in 2016.”