New for Mattingly, but not S. Florida
Dear Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred,
You come watch this mess.
You come see a game at Marlins Park after allowing this to happen.
You come suffer through just one night of baseball in an empty stadium to watch the worst team in baseball in a market devoid of hope, thanks to the latest chapter where baseball left it for lost.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been through anything like this,’’ Marlins manager Don Mattingly said after the Marlins’ 1-0 loss Wednesday night to Tampa Bay.
Mattingly, a good pro, a standup man, probably hasn’t been through this in nearly four decades of major-league baseball. But South Florida repeatedly has. Mattingly’s line was reminiscent of Jim Leyland, the Marlins manager in the tear-down year of 1998, holding up a lineup card before another dreary game.
“Worst lineup card I’ve ever filled out,’’ he said.
It was like kicking a puppy discussing those Marlins players then, just as it is to hold too many of these current Marlins players up to major-league standards at this point. Too young. Too overmatched.
Can we get CEO Derek Jeter to line up at shortstop? It’s open season on Jeter, and that’s understandable, because if you want to be an owner you have to be the part. And, commish, baseball again handed the Marlins an owner with a too-thin wallet and their second year of rebuilding shows as much.
Everyone expected pain by removing the one proven talent, J.T. Realmuto, from the worst offense in baseball last year. But this? They’re 10-31. They were shut out in back-to-back games by Tampa Bay. They’ve scored more than two runs just once in their last 11 games.
They’re last in any offensive category you can imagine, from modern OPS-plus to old-fashioned home runs, which they have just 24. There are 23 teams with at least double that.
Mattingly said what everyone sees.
“You see clubs over the years that basically pitch, play defense and scratch for runs, but they’ve always got kind of like two main guys,’’ Mattingly said. “They’ve
got a couple of main guys that thump, that are 25-, 30-home run guys that drive in 100 runs and then they try to put pieces around them to be able to get some guys on base, create some runs in a different way. I don’t think we have that true middleof-the-order type guys.”
They won’t for a while, either, as there’s no one coming up in the minors like Miguel Cabrera or Giancarlo Stanton once were. They can trade some of the young pitching, sure. But it’s always been hard to trust Marlins management, new or old, in that regard.
Jeter just demoted Lewis Brinson, the centerpiece of the one trade he couldn’t miss on. That was the Christian Yelich trade to Milwaukee. Yelich is chasing second straight league MVP award. The Marlins have nothing to show for trading him. Again, that’s a replay. Cabrera was traded to Detroit in 2007 for no help.
That’s the other part of this suffering South Florida knows. Seeing the national scoreboard. Considering the what-mighthave-been factor.
Dormant Marlins fans see a Sliding Doors universe where they still have, if not a contractual anchor like Stanton, then Yelich, Marcel Ozuna and Realmuto to make the core of the lineup Mattingly mentioned. Put them with starters like Cincinnati’s Luis Castillo, San Diego’s Chris Paddack and the New York Yankees’ Domingo German, who were all dumped for nothing by previous Marlins management and now are the best on their staffs.
That’s a contending team. This is a mess, Commish. It’s nice to see the nationally televised games being some interchangeable loop of the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs and Dodgers. It’s nice to see you grace other parks with your presence.
But come and see the franchise baseball has given the Marlins again and again.
Come and enjoy the atmosphere, as the marketing campaign ran.
Come for just one endless night in an unmercifully endless season and see what your office has allowed.