Ex-GM: Marlins should start over
As Derek Jeter’s executives work feverishly to try to dump Giancarlo Stanton, Martin Prado and Dee Gordon, here’s the question:
Do you keep the other key pieces, even knowing that Marcell Ozuna will be unaf- fordable to Miami as a free agent after 2019, or do you overhaul everything and do a total rebuild, trying to replicate what the World Series champion Houston Astros accomplished?
The Marlins have told teams Christian Yelich and Ozuna aren’t available, but at least one longtime former GM believes that’s a mistake.
The thinking is this: You’re probably not going to win with Yelich and Ozuna but no Stanton and Gordon and mediocre pitching, so why not just start from scratch?
“The cut has to go much deeper than (Stanton) if you are going to rebuild their franchise into one that will have sustainability,” MLB Network analyst and former Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said. “That’s a hard pill to swallow. The one position you don’t want to be is in the middle where you are not good enough to win.
“My approach would be you have to be in active listening mode. If you wait another year on Ozuna (in his last season before free agency), the trade value goes down dramatically.
“What is Christian Yelich going to be if he’s surrounded by a bunch of young players? You have to aggressively put yourself in position to maximize every single asset. They’ve got a payroll projected to be $145 million and then $170 million in 2019. They don’t have players internally to replace those players.
“That’s why I would advocate a total rebuild here, and I am looking for everything.”
O’Dowd, Rockies GM for 15 years till 2014, made another good point: “In today’s game, when you are using 35 to 40 players per year to get through a season, you have to have impactful depth, and they don’t have any. The drop-off is precipitous beyond their frontline players. They are light years away in signings (from being a contender). You have to have a ton of great drafts to augment frontline players. By the time you do that, the frontline players will be gone anyway.”
O’Dowd said, “Where I got into problems is I went to Colorado with the mindset of going with a complete rebuild and then was told (by ownership) we would try to contend and rebuild at the same time because of the fan base.”
Jeter apparently doesn’t want to totally alienate the fan base by trading every good player. But that shouldn’t matter, O’Dowd said, because “if they rebuild totally, the Marlins attendance (historically) didn’t fluctuate with them being average or sucking.”