What is the Appropriate Amount of Time for Marlins Fans to Vent?

[Omar]

They did not trade Miguel Cabrera after 2003. He was traded a handful of years later.

Was he traded for baseball reasons or monetary ones?

The rest is stuff teams do. They change. The Giants won the World Series last year and are probably not bringing back Angel Pagan. Shame on them?

Enough of the important parts of the '03 team came back to the extent that the '04 team on paper was good enough to defend it. They didn't. On paper, everyone loved the '05 team. After '05, they had the firesale because of two mediocre seasons.

Angel Pagan is one member of a lineup, and the Giants have created a culture around their club that invites trust in management. The Marlins had not at the time (and have further cemented since their move away from one) and dismissed not one, not two, but three starting players. If it works better visually, the right side of the field save Luis Castillo was shipped off.

Or if we're doing it based on awards, that offseason we shipped away a defending GG winner to allegedly sign the NLCS MVP, and then made no legitimate attempt to sign him either. Is Marco Scutaro heading for the scrap heap?

Moving players is fine (as the Giants are doing with Pagan and previous champions have done before), but how are they being replaced? Was Damion Easley supposed to be the 2004 NLCS MVP?

A lot of the players you listed went on to be mediocre the rest of their careers.

Encarnacion?
Pavano stayed in '04 before moving on to the Yankees and becoming a nobody.
Redman was a stopgap. Absolutely irrelevant after '03 and the rest of his career proves it.

If Encarnacion was so bad in management's eyes, why did they trade for him in the middle of the season?

Josh Beckett went on to win the 2007 ALCS MVP and a championship with the Red Sox.

Derrek Lee's OPS in 03: .888
Lee's OPS in 04-07: .860, 1.080, .842, .913

AJ Burnett was apparently mediocre enough in Toronto to get a huge deal from the Yankees all the way in 2008.

We traded away all these guys to not mount a significant defense, which is especially unfair to the fan base considering the youth of all of those players. If they had merely hung on to the majority of them, they could have at least challenged for the championship for at least the next few years.

The current firesale was a firesale of a team that sucked.

This one's right. But it's also significantly beside the point.

Comparing his firesales to '97 and pretending it's just all one big "Marlins Way" is rather unfair. It's not a regardless of competition thing...it's arguable that the firesales under Loria happened, in part, because the teams were no longer competing and he didn't feel like spending on a loser at the time.

Like, it's fine to not like him, but these things are facts. He didn't just trade the entire team after 2003. He didn't just trade away a good 2012 team.
And the core of players before the Reyes, Buehrle, Bell era were here for awhile and did nothing as a team.

If you want to set the baseline as trading the entire team, then you're absolutely factually correct. Some people from the 25 man roster that won a World Series completed the 2004 season in Marlin uniforms. But if that's the standard we're using, then championships simply aren't something we're ever going to be sniffing with any sort of frequency or legitimacy. You're right, the facts are clear: 1/3 of the lineup and 3/5 of the rotation were gone within 12 months of all that bubbly. If that's a legitimate title defense in your eyes, fine, but I always assumed championships implied higher standards. The Champion Giants you cited seem to agree.

It's simply not arguable that firesales only happen because of competitive reasons. The 2005 Marlins completed the third consecutive season of .500 baseball and finished third in the NL East, closer to the division title than 04 and closer to the Wild Card as well.

Was the 2005 sell-off warranted for long-term reasons? That's a completely different discussion all together. But was it for short-term competitive reasons? Absolutely and completely not. There is simply no factual evidence of it. We dismantled the most successful run, bar none, in franchise history. That's a team that sucked?

One full and one subtle dismantling of winners by Loria. Two championships dismantled by different owners. Ours is a tale, under any owner, of constant loss of players. After twenty years, the diehards are finally through with it.

I always thought Omar hated Billy Beane?

Just think he's overrated. He did inspire a pretty great book and a moderately entertaining movie, though.

[Party]

The rumored deal Cabrera's people gave the FO was 10 years/$180 million or some figure like that.

If true, and I trust this source, that is not only a failed baseball decision but a failed monetary position all things considered at the team. The team had very little money tied in long term commitments.

This team has a horrible inability to look long term.

The TV deal with FSN through 2022 signed in 2004(?) with no early opt out clause is another great example of this. The Marlins have left money on the table in exchange for short term successes.

[Omar]

Doesn't sound like a great picture long term.

[Erick]

Was he traded for baseball reasons or monetary ones?


Angel Pagan is one member of a lineup, and the Giants have created a culture around their club that invites trust in management. The Marlins had not at the time (and have further cemented since their move away from one) and dismissed not one, not two, but three starting players. If it works better visually, the right side of the field save Luis Castillo was shipped off.

Or if we're doing it based on awards, that offseason we shipped away a defending GG winner to allegedly sign the NLCS MVP, and then made no legitimate attempt to sign him either. Is Marco Scutaro heading for the scrap heap?

Moving players is fine (as the Giants are doing with Pagan and previous champions have done before), but how are they being replaced? Was Damion Easley supposed to be the 2004 NLCS MVP?


If Encarnacion was so bad in management's eyes, why did they trade for him in the middle of the season?

Josh Beckett went on to win the 2007 ALCS MVP and a championship with the Red Sox.

Derrek Lee's OPS in 03: .888
Lee's OPS in 04-07: .860, 1.080, .842, .913

AJ Burnett was apparently mediocre enough in Toronto to get a huge deal from the Yankees all the way in 2008.

We traded away all these guys to not mount a significant defense, which is especially unfair to the fan base considering the youth of all of those players. If they had merely hung on to the majority of them, they could have at least challenged for the championship for at least the next few years.


This one's right. But it's also significantly beside the point.


If you want to set the baseline as trading the entire team, then you're absolutely factually correct. Some people from the 25 man roster that won a World Series completed the 2004 season in Marlin uniforms. But if that's the standard we're using, then championships simply aren't something we're ever going to be sniffing with any sort of frequency or legitimacy. You're right, the facts are clear: 1/3 of the lineup and 3/5 of the rotation were gone within 12 months of all that bubbly. If that's a legitimate title defense in your eyes, fine, but I always assumed championships implied higher standards. The Champion Giants you cited seem to agree.

It's simply not arguable that firesales only happen because of competitive reasons. The 2005 Marlins completed the third consecutive season of .500 baseball and finished third in the NL East, closer to the division title than 04 and closer to the Wild Card as well.

Was the 2005 sell-off warranted for long-term reasons? That's a completely different discussion all together. But was it for short-term competitive reasons? Absolutely and completely not. There is simply no factual evidence of it. We dismantled the most successful run, bar none, in franchise history. That's a team that sucked?

One full and one subtle dismantling of winners by Loria. Two championships dismantled by different owners. Ours is a tale, under any owner, of constant loss of players. After twenty years, the diehards are finally through with it.


Just think he's overrated. He did inspire a pretty great book and a moderately entertaining movie, though.

I'm not denying that the front office has been cheap. I'm just saying they haven't had firesales right after winning. The context of the argument began when I disagreed with mk7's post about the "Marlins Way" which dealt with them selling off pieces regardless of results. Bad/mediocre results have played a part in their firesales, imo.


In 2004, Derrek Lee was no longer here and Pudge left, yes. That's not a firesale though. I don't know who the three dismissed starting pitchers were because I don't believe that happened. The starting rotation was back in 2004 with the exception of Redman from what I remember.

Juan Encarnacion had a very mediocre career after that '03 season. As a matter of fact, Encarnacion was basically a mediocre player his whole entire career, really. While he was brought back via trade that year, he was also not the primary reason that trade was made in 2004.

[Bobbob1313]

Regarding the players lost going into '04:

They had more than a replacement for Encarnacion with Cabrera.
Hee Seop Choi was a top-25 prospect in baseball pre-03, and put up an .880 OPS as left-handed batter in Sun Life, which is pretty cool.
And they had AJ Burnett coming back after the first two months, so there wasn't really a reason to bring Redman back.

The only player they did not have a reasonable replacement for was Pudge. But I think it is unfair to say they did not make an attempt to defend the title.

They also attempted to make up for the Pudge mistake by trading for Lo Duca, who ended up sucking. But again, these were all reasonable attempts to approximate the lost players.