Miami Marlins need to find their own Jose Ramirez

Will the Miami Marlins ever have themselves a lifer?

It's a question that has both fascinated and haunted Marlins fans since the confetti started falling on their first World Series championship...and that first firesale got underway. Since then, it's rare air indeed for a player to even make it to a second contract in Miami. Fans fret every offseason about what jersey to buy and how attached to get to any particular player. It's a lonely way to fan, and it's a condition that feels unique to the Miami Marlins fan experience.

Case in point? Only two Marlins players have more than 1,000 games played with the club. Arizona and Tampa each have three. Colorado has nine. Furthermore, the games played leaders for each of those three clubs? True MLB stars, each with at least 300 career home runs, with multiple honors, awards, and seasons spent being counted among some of the games best.

The Marlins top two leaders here are Luis Castillo and Jeff Conine. Marlins legends to be sure, but legends of the game? Less so. Yes, active MLB career home run leader Giancarlo Stanton just missed the cut off at 986 games, but the narrative stands. The stars just don't stay, either traded before money is needed like Miguel Cabrera, or dealt afterwards like Hanley Ramirez, Stanton, and Christian Yelich. But even that Castillo, Conine level of star has never been allowed to finish a career out with the team. No one who played long enough to be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration has ever spent their entire career with the organization.

Which makes one of the MLB offseason's more surprising storylines all the more frustrating for Marlins fans and hopefully inspirational for Marlins ownership.

Namely, the fact that somehow, someway...Jose Ramirez is now looking like a Guardians lifer.

Don't get me wrong, the Guardians have been an immensely successful franchise the past decade. Yet committed to spending enough to keep a Hall of Fame caliber talent happy? They're much closer to the Marlins orbit in that respect, which as anyone reading this knows, isn't a compliment to the Guardians organization. How are they able to pull this off, when Miami never has?

As the MLB Trade Rumors article linked above notes, a key component is that Ramirez does appear to genuinely like Cleveland. Whether he's a sucker for long, cold winters, has an annual pass to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or has just really drunk the organizational Kool-Aid doesn't matter. What matters is he wants to be there, has said so on the record, and has meant it enough to accept earning millions less than he would have gotten on the open market- repeatedly.

Now stop and think how many Marlins players you've repeatedly seen go on the record as loving Miami and wanting to stay here. Have said it and made you actually believe it.

I'll wait. Dig deep.

Only a couple players in recent memory fit the brief, and both of them took the field last night at loanDepot Park in the WBC. One of them was traded in Luis Arraez. The other? That'd be Sandy Alcantara, getting ready for his eighth season in a Marlins uniform. Again, that's rare air for Miami...but feels like a drop in the bucket compared to the fourteen and counting seasons Ramirez will spend sporting Cleveland colors.

The Marlins really, really need to find someone who loves being here as much as Ramirez loves being in Cleveland. Someone that is willing to buy in fully with the cyclical nature of a small market team and serve as proof of concept that the Marlins can keep someone here forever, that they are willing to go that extra mile for a player that gives their all to the organization.

Even if the Marlins only do it once.

Because that's all it takes to eliminate a mountain of negative perception, be it from fans, the national media, agents of future Marlins players, or players currently within the Marlins system. Now, you might be thinking that the Rays haven't done this. That's true. The thing is...the Rays haven't kicked their fanbase in the stomach as often as Marlins ownership groups have done so to their fans either. So the Marlins really need to find that one-time Ramirez- the player that will spend a career here. Chase titles. Get a statue in front of the stadium someday.

Is that Sandy Alcantara? That's certainly still on the table, and should the next CBA go the way the owners hope and a salary cap and floor come to MLB, the Marlins would be crazy not to explore it. If not though? Or if for whatever reason the front office feels they shouldn't invest in Alcantara for a second extension?

Then they need to move fast on extending a member of their current group of young stars in the making. Jakob Marsee, Eury Perez, Agustin Ramirez, Kyle Stowers...lock up someone and keep fans believing that one day, it might be safe to buy someone's jersey for the long haul.

Because it's something the Marlins fanbase sorely needs. Just once.