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Miami Marlins: The Season Ending Press Conference

By Christian La Fontaine |

On Tuesday afternoon, Miami Marlins President of Baseball Operations Michael Hill and Team President David Samson sat down with a room full of press members in trying to wrap the season up. The following is what we learned from said wrap up.

First and foremost we have semi-confirmation on the status of Dan Jennings next season. He will be stepping down from the manager role and moving back to the front office. Samson was adamant that the title of GM was his alone. There may be a case of double speak at play here. I believe Samson when he says that Dan Jennings will hold the official title; however, when it comes to the actual duties of a true General Manager, basically being the lead decision maker, I’m skeptical.

Samson was suspiciously deliberate in stressing the word title throughout the whole segment, and that Jennings wasn’t present at the conference isn’t a great sign either. Look for someone else to be the true GM next year, someone like Michael Hill or Mike Berger.

Another piece of news was the resigning of Ichiro Suzuki to a 1-year, $2 million contract.

The entirely competent David Samson called this a “Major, Major Announcement in our standpoint”. Then he explained the various reasons why, including veteran leadership, veteran leadership, and veteran leadership.

He did say something about Ichiro having potential as a back of the bullpen arm, though that may have been a weak attempt at humor.

Finally the long-awaited (by no one) moving in of the fences was confirmed. Samson said that indeed the dimensions would be altered, though by how much is yet to be determined.

He then proceeded to state that “this is the kind of thing that we’re working on to make the team better” and list the last name of each high-ranking member of the front office.

Regardless of your opinion on the dimensions at Marlins park, it’s incontrovertible fact that they have nothing to do with the talent level of the team.  If the key decision makers for the Fish really think that making the park smaller is a positive part of their off season, the team is in serious trouble.

Those are all the topics that were discussed at yesterday’s press conference. It’s a little depressing at this point but remember, we knew almost all of this was coming awhile ago.

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