This hurts

Some former Marlins are going to become World Series champions this postseason, as explained earlier this week. It’s inevitable and that’s OK. The club was not going to get there with them, hence the rebuild. Might as well flip them for more controllable assets and assemble the necessary depth to eventually contend.

But this is getting out of hand.

These guys aren’t just along for the ride—they’re going to be immortalized as heroes. The Marlins develop them and somebody else reaps the benefits.

Giancarlo Stanton eviscerated the longest home run of the postseason thus far—Statcast estimated at 443 feet—against Blake Treinen, one of 2018’s most untouchable pitchers.

Most New York Yankees fans probably hadn’t heard of Adeiny Hechavarria until they quietly acquired him via trade on August 31. Hech defied the laws of physics on a regular basis in Miami throughout his five seasons there, but he does it in an elimination game and now the world finally cares?

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And then there’s Christian f****** Yelich.

He clinched home-field advantage for the Milwaukee Brewers by starring in Game 163. What an encore in the NLDS opener: the two-run homer that initially put them in control, then scoring the decisive run in extras (reaching base four times overall).

Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images

None of this has any bearing on the future of the Marlins. At least in the cases of Stanton and Yelich, they received legitimate talent in return, but prospects that are still years away from tapping into their ultimate potential. We must reserve judgement.

In the meantime, other teams’ fans are fulfilled, yapping on Twitter about the instant gratification of their acquisitions. How can you blame them?

These things are supposed to be cyclical. The Marlins, however, are 15 years removed from qualifying for the postseason, and even the most ardent Derek Jeter stans couldn’t show you a path to ending the drought with players currently in the organization. We’ll be experiencing the 2019 pennant chase from the same perspective and probably 2020, too.

It has become trendy in Major League Baseball to resuscitate a franchise by bottoming out in this manner. The process is logically sound, though still subject to the volatility of amateur talent evaluation and plain ol’ luck.

Fish Stripes is an analytical community. I feel as though we braced you for an extended stretch of non-competitiveness and have fairly credited the team and individuals for their successes along the way. When you set realistic expectations, bad baseball can still be fun baseball.

But I don’t have any words to ease the pain of watching familiar faces dominate October in different uniforms.