The Miami Marlins' 2015 season started off as so many of them do — with slight hope. Some predicted the team might even compete for a wild card playoff spot. However, the season soon devolved into the type of stunning tragicomedy that only the Marlins can pull off. Owner Jeffrey Loria fired manager Mike Redmond less than a month and half into the season and made the head scratching decision to replace him with the team's GM Dan Jennings.
Jennings hadn't coached a baseball team since he did a stint with an Alabama high school back in the '80s. Many assumed he'd only fill the position temporarily, but Loria has let him continue to coach out the rest of the season to disastrous results. The team is currently 4th in the NL East and basically just waiting to be officially mathematically eliminated from the playoff hunt. A mid-summer injury to star Giancarlo Stanton didn't help much, but the team had still struggled with him.
So it isn't much of a surprise that Jennings won't be returning as manager next year. Loria goes through managers faster than Taylor Swift goes through boyfriends. Jennings is expected to get his pink slip sometime in the next few days.
So does that mean Jennings goes back to his front office job as general manager? Well, that's where things start to get tricky, and according to the Miami Herald's Clark Spencer that's Loria's preferred plan ... maybe. It just might not work out that way.
While Jennings has been in the dugout, former assistant GM Mike Berger has taking over the front office, which could set up a potential power struggle.
There are also rumors that Jennings might return to the front office, just not in his former top dog role. His contract with the team runs through 2018 after all, but there's also chatter that he'd like to ditch the team altogether and pursue the GM job with the Seattle Mariners.
Add to this the fact that members of the scouting and player development teams have been let go or reassigned, and more reorganization and bloodletting could very well occur all over the front office in the next few weeks. Oh, right, and it's not just the Marlins who are struggling. Every single one of their farm teams sucks too. Their four top minor-league associates are all either in last or next-to-last place.
Which is all just to say that the Marlins remain an almost comically inept baseball team. Which rivals "it's hot outside" for the most obvious and oft repeated news update of any South Florida summer.