Miami Marlins: The Cloudy Times In South Beach

The Miami Marlins are 20-31 and in second to last place in the NL East on June 1st. That is not what the Marlins envisioned after making a flurry of moves in the off-season, which brought Dee Gordon, Martin Prado and others to South Beach.

More from Marlins News

After a 3-11 start to the season, Miami went on a 9-1 run to get the team back to .500, at 12-12. Since then, the team hasn’t been winning games consistently.

Since getting back to .500 the Marlins have gone 8-19, dropping their record to their current 20-31 mark.

When the Marlins put this team together they figured they would be competing with the Nationals for the division, not with the Phillies to compete for last place.

The Marlins have found themselves in a place they have been before, that place is the joke of the majors.

Many people around the league laughed at the Marlins for firing Mike Redmond, just a little under 2 months into the season and replaced with Dan Jennings. Jennings had no experience as a manager, besides being a High School coach 30 years ago.

Let me set the record straight on the Jennings hire, the idea isn’t bad, but the guy for the job is not right. The idea of having a GM or any guy in the front office manage the team is a good idea, if you are 100% bought into analytics. Unfortunately, the Marlins and Jennings are not.

Dan Jennings in his GM role didn’t do a great job putting together the team in the first place, so putting him to manage the 20-31 team that he assembled was really a head scratcher.

Yes, the Marlins have only four wins under Dan Jennings, but he hasn’t done an awful job as a manger.

The move was made two weeks ago, so it’s time to move on from the topic.

But where do the Marlins go from here?

June is going to be a huge months for the Miami Marlins. I wouldn’t say the season is 100% lost for the Marlins since it’s only June 1st and there is plenty of baseball left.

However, as we discussed on our podcast last night, June hasn’t been great to the Marlins in years past.

The true talent level of the Marlins is a .500 or better team, with 111 games left. The Marlins must go 61-48 the rest of the way just to finish with a record of .500. Which is obviously a hard task for the Marlins this year, but I wouldn’t put it past it especially with Jose Fernandez coming back soon.

For this to happen though I do think the Marlins must make some sort of move and I think that move is trading for a pitcher. Missing out on James Shields has come back to haunt the Marlins since their pitching has been pretty bad and hurt for most of the season.

So if the Marlins want to stay competitive this year I think they need to go get a pitcher. I’m not saying they should go trade for a Cole Hamels, but they should go get a pitcher in a tier below him.

It makes no sense to break up this core and the Marlins have already come out and said they don’t plan to do so.

They believe in this core to win games and bring them to the postseason, a place they have not been since winning it all in 2003.

The upcoming off-season is huge for the Marlins with a heavy free agent pitching class. So with adding a little, this Marlins core must figure out away to get on track.

Follow Marlin Maniac on Twitter @MarlinManiac for all your Miami Marlins news, opinion and analysis!

More from Marlin Maniac

Home/Marlins News