With the Miami Marlins' offseason still in the early stages as they wait for St.Louis and Boston to duke it out in the upcoming World Series, the supply of possible pieces is pretty limited. With that said, I was relatively surprised to be of witness to the new SBNation series entitled Dr. SB Nation which has an individual baseball writer to give an overview on a specific team and also give some advice on what they could do to improve during the offseason. On Tuesday, noted baseball scribe Cee Angi continued the series by examining the Marlins while "trying" to predict what the team could do in the offseason to improve for the 2014 season.
As we all know, the current iteration of the Marlins are an extremely different animal to the rest of the MLB jungle so it would be an extremely difficult task for Ms. Angi to predict what the offseason could hold for Miami. Like the majority of baseball fans or writers who ponder the future of the Marlins, the first thought that runs through their minds revolves around controversial owner Jeffrey Loria. To finish off her piece, Angi used the following paragraph that proved to be a somewhat haunting but yet realistic foretelling of what could continue to happen for the Marlins.
At least the Astros have a discernible game plan and the initiative to make the team better long-term. While it makes for painful baseball in the meantime, at least their aim is true. That's not the case in Miami, where there's simply no hope unless ownership changes its ways.
That feeling of hopelessness continues to run through the psyche of Miami fans because despite the promise that they see on the field, they have that feeling that destruction is on the horizon. Perhaps change could be on its
way with the team taking on a more aggressive outlook as they head into the offseason but sometimes that change might not be
good enough.
Perhaps the recent success for the likes of Christian Yelich or Jose Fernandez has proven that the "build from within" mindset could work for this team but a certain level of aggression or clear plan for the future needs to put in place to allow the team to breakaway from their depressing scenario. Could the Marlins build a team around the likes of Fernandez, Yelich, Stanton, Ozuna or Henderson Alvarez? Possibly, but fans need to be reassured that this group of young players are going to part of the future game-plan for the Marlins and not potential trade chips once they get to be too expensive.
As a life-long
Brewers fan, this influx of young talent reminds me of that solid core of young players (Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hart and Gallardo) who stormed into Milwaukee in the mid to late 2000's. While that group of players of players thrived as they entered the big leagues, their success was hindered on the fact that owner Mark Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin worked to increase their payroll to keep their talented players in Milwaukee while using their disposable assets to acquire individual pieces (Sabathia in '08 or Greinke in '10) to help lead the team to playoff success.
While that comparison is probably wishful thinking on my end, Miami has a solid group of young players who could end up thriving in this league. Could they play their prime years together in Miami? Of course, but there needs to be some serious and potentially jaw-dropping changes to make those fantasies become a reality.
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