For those of you scoring at home, that's not necessarily a good thing.
The excitement that came from waving goodbye to Jeffrey Loria after he sold the team has melted away faster than a Wendy's Frosty sitting on your dashboard in July. The Marlins have yet to even pick up a spring training baseball on Jeter's watch, but the narrative surrounding the team is still poisonous.
Jeter is a fraud! The new owners shouldn't have bought the team if they didn't have the money to pay players! LOUD NOISES! That's pretty much been the talk of the Marlins' offseason. And, yes, again, this comes after the worst owner in all of
To say Jeter and the new owners have started off on the wrong foot in Miami would be an understatement. Every move the Marlins have made since Loria has left has been met with disgust. Letting go of longtime broadcaster Rich Waltz, firing a scout while he was in the hospital recovering from cancer, and the inevitable trade of Giancarlo Stanton have all been bad looks for the new ownership team, and Jeter specifically.
But guess what? It is what it is. Jeter has more baseball knowledge in the callouses of his hands than anyone talking about these issues has in their entire body. He knows what a winner looks, smells, and feels like. He rescued the Marlins from the cold, chubby, greedy hands of Loria.
Should Jeter and his team really be taking so much bad publicity for tearing down a flawed organization that is universally accepted as bankrupt of any foundation? When someone buys a home with plans to tear it down and rebuild their own, should they be told what to keep? No. They should be free to build their own vision, especially when they spend a billion dollars like the Marlins owners did.
The Fish have one of the worst minor-league systems in all of baseball and a roster that has no chance to compete. Actually, scratch that: They've had a chance to compete. For years. And they were poor at it. Nobody attends Marlins games, yet everyone wants the team to spend money on players. The team also has arguably the worst TV deals in all of baseball. Luckily, that'll end soon and a new deal will result in more money for the club to spend.
Marlins fans and some outsiders are judging Jeter and the others who've come to fix this mess because fans aren't happy with some of the things the new ownership is throwing out? Sounds like an episode of Hoarders. Teams such as the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros didn't go from laughingstocks to World Series champions by taking half-measures. They didn't keep a $300 million player on the roster while they rebuilt the organization from the soda machines up. They tore it down and started from scratch. They held an estate sale and used the proceeds to invest.
The Marlins are a disaster. When a disaster happens, you call FEMA. Jeter and the moneybags behind him are FEMA when it comes to baseball in South Florida. If they don't turn this team around in the next decade, South Florida might not have a team when someone else takes it off their hands.
So shut up and let them fix this. Trust the process.
Other than baseball games you've already been losing, what do you have to lose?
