Sliders: How the Miami Marlins are plotting their post-trade deadline vision

The Miami Marlins exist beneath a cloud of their own making. They won the World Series in 1997, their fifth season, then immediately tore down the roster. Six years later, they won it again — and soon those stars were gone, too.

The era since has only reinforced the lesson: If you buy a Marlins jersey, make sure it’s blank on the back. The players never stay very long, so the fans stay away; the Marlins have ranked last in National League attendance in 17 of the last 18 seasons that tickets were sold.

This troubled history predates Peter Bendix, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations, who replaced Kim Ng atop the hierarchy last November. The Marlins had just made the playoffs for the first time in a full season since 2003, and responded by creating a position above general manager, the title Ng held. She promptly — and understandably — resigned.

After Tuesday’s trade-deadline flurry, the Marlins’ playoff roster is mostly a memory. Of the 24 players who appeared in the wild-card round — a two-game sweep by the Philadelphia Phillies — 16 have left the organization. Of the eight who remain, two (pitchers Braxton Garrett and Jesús Luzardo) are on the 60-day injured list. The others are third baseman Jake Burger, shortstop Xavier Edwards, catcher Nick Fortes, outfielder Jesús Sánchez and relievers Andrew Nardi and George Soriano.

It’s a thin foundation — and yet, the way the Marlins saw it, they didn’t have a strong one, anyway. The team was 84-78 last season but was outscored by 57 runs, the worst run differential for any playoff team in history. The Marlins were mostly healthy and thrived in one-run games, at 33-14, and their only real power hitter, Jorge Soler, would be leaving as a free agent.

Knowing all that, it was easy for Bendix, as an outsider, to view 2023 as a mirage. After the deadline, he believes, the Marlins are set up much better to finally halt the cycle that has defined the franchise — as long as some of the lottery tickets he traded for actually cash out.

“Those Marlins stars, when they come up here, they’re going to help us get to the playoffs multiple years, they’re going to help us win the World Series multiple times, and they’re going to develop connections with the fans, too,” Bendix told reporters on Tuesday. “And that’s something that’s really important to us as a front office, that we can have both those connections and winning teams.”

The Marlins hired Bendix from the Tampa Bay Rays, where he had been general manager under Erik Neander. The Rays are the envy of every small-budget franchise, because they usually contend and always maintain a low payroll.

The Rays have never won the World Series — let alone multiple titles, as Bendix envisions for Miami — but they’re skilled at trading players before they lose their value. That helps the Rays stay relevant and avoid the deep, seemingly hopeless ruts of slower-moving teams like the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox.

There were no half-measures from the Marlins this time. In May, they traded two-time batting champion Luis Arraez to San Diego. In the last week of July, they further stripped their lineup (Jazz Chisholm Jr., Josh Bell and Bryan De La Cruz) and pitching staff (Tanner Scott, Trevor Rogers, A.J. Puk, Huascar Brazobán, Bryan Hoenig and JT Chargois).

In those deals — Arraez included — they collected 19 new players (plus a player to be named or cash), buying in bulk by dealing years of control. Of the players Miami traded, only Bell and Scott were facing free agency after the season. In a seller’s market, it made sense to go big.

“In most of these cases, it came down to the idea that we were getting one, if not multiple players that we think are impact players for the next five, six years, if not longer,” Bendix said. “And that’s what we’re trying to build here.”

For now, only one player from the deals, left fielder Kyle Stowers, has joined the major-league club. Miami got Stowers and second baseman Connor Norby — both former second-round picks — from the Baltimore Orioles for Rogers, capitalizing on a 10-start stretch in which Rogers had a 3.48 ERA. (In his first 10 starts, it was 6.11.)

The Marlins also traded high on Arraez and Scott, sending both to the Padres’ A.J. Preller, an aggressive general manager unafraid to part with top prospects. The Marlins (who put Hoenig in the package with Scott) added eight players from the San Diego deals, with four now ranking among Miami’s top 12 prospects at MLB.com.

Hyping the farm system is well-trod territory for losing teams, and the hard part comes if the Marlins ever do build a winner. Bruce Sherman has kept low payrolls since buying the team in 2017, and his former chief executive, Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, resigned after five years when he lost faith in the direction of the organization.

More turnover could be coming this offseason, when manager Skip Schumaker can be a free agent after asking the team to remove its club option on his deal. A departure by Schumaker — the reigning NL Manager of the Year — would be more of the same for a franchise desperately seeking a future that can finally bury its past.

How to be a deadline casualty, yet always in demand

It’s the butterfly effect of the big leagues: a tremor on the West Coast can knock you down back east. It’s so routine that we take it for granted.

So it was last weekend when the Boston Red Sox traded for James Paxton, who had been designated for assignment by the Los Angeles Dodgers. To take Paxton’s roster spot, the Red Sox designated Chase Anderson, a veteran righty with a 4.85 ERA.

Anderson, 36, has been released five times, sold, waived and traded twice. His removal from the roster was not particularly noteworthy, but manager Alex Cora brought him up last Sunday when nobody asked.

“No doubt about it,” Cora said, “he will impact an organization.”

Cora was not suggesting that Anderson should retire; when folks told him late in his career that he’d be a good coach, Cora took that as a signal that the end was near. But he was happy to discuss the qualities that make people say that about a player, especially one as well-traveled as Anderson.

“There’s a reason teams keep picking them up,” Cora said. “They’re good big-league players, but then you get him in the clubhouse and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is more than just a player.’”

Anderson has played in the majors for eight teams in his 11 seasons (Arizona, Milwaukee, Toronto, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay, Colorado and Boston), plus Detroit, Texas and Pittsburgh in spring training or the minors. He’s 59-58 with a 4.37 ERA, essentially league average.

But the variety of experiences matters, and having a feel for the nuances of baseball life has helped explain the staying power of many peripatetic pitchers, like retired righties Mike Morgan and Edwin Jackson.

“He puts the team in front of himself,” Cora said of Anderson. “He’s been on the mound in every position. Every situation that comes up for a player, he’s been a part of it. The way he talks in that room, I was like, ‘Man, he really gets it.’”

In June, the Red Sox began requiring that players wear sportcoats on some road trips; teams did this for years until recently, when they started to prioritize comfort while traveling. That was at the suggestion of Anderson and a younger player, David Hamilton, after observing that teammates looked somewhat sloppy.

The ability to recognize things like that, while keeping an open mind to new on-field approaches, tends to keep players around, especially as data rapidly changes the sport. A popular pitching style of the 2010s — emphasizing the top and bottom of the strike zone — has swung back again to commanding the edges of the plate.

“You go from one era — and I hate to say it because he’s not that old — but pitching vertical to pitching east-west, he uses all that stuff, the grips and all that,” Cora said. “He’s learned a lot throughout the years.”

Gimme Five

Five bits of ballpark wisdom

The Dodgers’ Teoscar on learning English

If your baseball career topped out in high school and you struggled with introductory college Spanish, you might be in awe of Teoscar Hernández, the slugging corner outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Hernández, 31, won the home run derby at the All-Star Game and is thriving in his first season with the NL West leaders, hitting .260/.327/.474 with 22 homers. He’s also one of the more engaging stars in the sport, with an admirable command of two languages — quite helpful for English-only media members, but also for himself.

With no formal English training growing up in the Dominican Republic, Hernández learned the language after signing with the Houston Astros in 2011, when he was 18. All teams have Spanish-speaking translators now, but Hernández explained how it helps him to speak it on his own.

It’s been a decade of fluency: “I started having a conversation in 2012, and then in 2014, that’s when I could have a conversation with anybody. I felt like I had the confidence and trust in myself that I could go (in front of) cameras and speak English.”

Believing in yourself is the hardest part: “It’s just trying to have that confidence to not be wrong. I think that’s what’s keeping all the Latin players to not speak English, because they think they’re gonna say something wrong and they’re gonna look like clowns. Talking to the other guys, I think that’s why most of the guys don’t try to speak more English.”

A good teacher makes all the difference: “I had a teacher that was helping me throughout my whole process to learn English with the Astros, her name was Doris Gonzalez, and she was the director of the English classes. She always said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and to say anything wrong, because you’re gonna have somebody that is gonna say, ‘Look, this is the way to say it.’ We had class every day, I remember it was for 40 minutes or an hour. And there’s a program, Rosetta Stone, that we used. We had to go to the class and then spend 30 minutes every day on the program.”

The language barrier can have an impact on the field: “I think there are players, they’re afraid to have good games because they’re thinking of the interview after the game and what they’re gonna say. Are they gonna say something wrong, or say something that the fans and the public are going to misunderstand? Knowing that you can have a conversation makes things easier, at least for me, and obviously you go and feel more comfortable on the field.”

Watch out for those homophones: “You’ve got different words that sound the same when you say it, but they mean different things. Sometimes putting that together is the hardest thing for me. That’s what’s always keeping me on my toes.”

Off the Grid

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

Hal Carlson, Phillies/Pirates

There were 280 possible choices for the Phillies/Pirates square on Wednesday, and I didn’t use Hal Carlson. I went with Dave Rucker — who can resist his rendition of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”  with Jose Lind and Morris Madden? — and I’d never heard of Carlson until researching this item.

A spitballer who joined the Pirates in 1917, Carlson was forced to learn a new repertoire after baseball banned the pitch three years later. He struggled, drifted to the minors, resurfaced with the Phillies and led the NL in wins above replacement in 1926.

That metric was not around then, of course, but Baseball-Reference credits Carlson with 8.7 WAR for that season — more than two wins better than the No. 2 player, the Pirates’ Ray Kremer. Carlson was very good, 17-12 with a 3.23 ERA, but his high WAR, I suspect, was due to park factors. The Phillies played in the cozy Baker Bowl, which seemed to impact everyone but him in 1926, when the rest of the staff had a 5.48 ERA.

Anyway, here’s where the story takes a dark turn. The Phillies traded Carlson to the Cubs the next June — and within three years, while still an active player, he was dead.

Carlson was scheduled to start against the Reds at Wrigley Field on May 28, 1930. He went to bed early the night before at the Hotel Carlos on North Sheffield Avenue, near the ballpark, and awoke around 2:15 a.m. with stomach pains.

He called a Cubs staffer, and soon teammates Kiki Cuyler, Riggs Stephenson and Cliff Heathcote were there, too. Carlson’s condition deteriorated quickly, blood filling his mouth, and by the time the team doctor and an ambulance arrived, around 3:30, Carlson had died of a stomach hemorrhage. He was 38 years old.

According to Carlson’s SABR biography, the hemorrhage might have been caused by a batted ball that had struck him in the abdomen during spring training, or the delayed effects of poison gas exposure while serving in World War I. In any case, the Cubs actually played that afternoon instead of postponing the game, as they would do under similar circumstances 72 years later, when the Cardinals’ Darryl Kile died at the team hotel before a scheduled day game at Wrigley.

The Cubs did postpone the next day’s game, when the team accompanied Carlson’s body to his hometown of Rockford, Ill. He left behind a daughter and a pregnant wife, who soon gave birth to a second daughter.

“No pitcher worked any harder or gave any more than Hal,” manager Joe McCarthy told the Associated Press. “He was loved by all of us on and off the diamond.”

Classic Clip

August 4, 1985

Tom Seaver’s 300th win and Rod Carew’s 3,000th hit

Thirty-nine years ago on Sunday, the baseball gods went heavy on poetry and symmetry. Two future Hall of Famers, who both made their debuts in 1967, reached career milestones on the same day, on opposite coasts — with their past looming in the background.

It was Aug. 4, 1985. Tom Seaver, 40, was pitching for the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium in New York, the city where he’d risen to stardom with the Mets. The same day, at Anaheim Stadium, Rod Carew, 39, was batting second for the Angels against the Minnesota Twins, his team for all seven of his AL batting titles.

Seaver had 299 wins. Carew had 2,999 hits. That afternoon, both would hit their hallowed numbers, Seaver by twirling a complete-game six-hitter and Carew by slapping a single to left off Frank Viola.

Seaver was the 17th pitcher to reach 300 victories; he would retire with 311. Carew was the 16th to collect 3,000 hits; he would retire with 3,053. The active leaders in the categories are the Astros’ 41-year-old Justin Verlander, who has 260 wins, and the Dodgers’ 34-year-old Freddie Freeman, who has 2,223 hits.

In this look back from MLB Network, take note of the reporter interviewing Seaver after the game: it’s Don Drysdale, then a White Sox TV analyst. Drysdale finished his Hall of Fame career with 209 victories.

(Top photo of the Marlins’ Calvin Faucher and Ali Sanchez: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)