Marlins Way

Another long week of baseball off-season and still no real movement. Unless if you consider the Minnesota Twins signing Ryan Doumit a big deal. If you do, I do not think you understand baseball quite well, but that is besides the point. Lets take a look at what is going on around the Miami Marlins:

• MLBTradeRumors reminds us that nine years ago today, the Colorado Rockies sent Mike Hampton and Juan Pierre to the Marlins  in exchange for Charles Johnson, Preston Wilson, Vic Darensbourg, and Pablo Ozuna. The Marlins then flipped Hampton to the Atlanta Braves for Tim Spooneybarger and Ryan Baker. Juan Pierre was a very important piece to the Marlins winning the World Series in 2003. The rest of the players really barred no impact on baseball after the trade.
• In that same article, MLBTradeRumors Mike Axisa gives some love to a post I made about why Reyes makes sense for the Marlins.
• Over on Fishstripes, former MarlinManiac Michael Jong does a a review on the play of Marlins catchers, first basemen, second basemen, third basemen, short stop, and left field in 2011.
• Michael also examines whether it is worth it for the Marlins to overspend on free agents this off-season.
• Over on Marlins Daily we have SCWS doing an excellent review of the Marlins uniforms. It is quite a long article, but quite worth the read.
• At the same time we have Griffin Klett looking at possible solutions for the Marlins at third base.
• Over on Marlins Diehards, David questions whether the Marlins owner Jeffery Loria can really be trusted.
• Wonder what Chris Volstad is doing this winter? Apparently he has a very sad face.
• Ted Hill gives us an update on Marlins Diehards about realignment and the expanded playoffs.
• Steve Slowinski on Fangraphs projects the factors that the Marlins new ballpark may effect.
• Juan Rodriguez of the Sun-Sentinel talks about Loria trying to change the Marlins brand.
• Jeff Passan attacks the Marlins Loria as a con artist and really rips into the Marlins supposed aggressiveness this off-season. Passan has some real skeptism if the Marlins are really working hard to sign free agents or if they are just pulling off an expensive PR move. Passan maybe right to be skeptical of the Marlins FO, but his article takes only one side of the story and is poorly angled from the Marlins perspective.
• Nathan Vardi of Forbes.com takes another view of the Marlins owner Loria. He praises him for doing what the other owners in the Marlins past have not been able to do, get Miami a new stadium deal.
• Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald has a great article about how some former Marlins executives express optimism about baseball flourishing in Miami long term.
• As our Will Privette predicted on his Rule V Candidate Preview, the Marlins added starting pitcher Tom Koehler,  lefty reliever Dan Jennings, and outfielder Kevin Mattison to the teams 40-man roster to protect from being picked up in the Rule V draft. The fourth player to be added was lefty reliever Ramon Benjamin. The Marlins 40-man roster now stands at 39.