Miami Marlins rivals continue to shake up the rumor mill

The off-season has begun and there are already some news. Of course the biggest story for the Miami Marlins is that there's a need for a new manager. We keep hearing about how the NL East division winning Philadelphia Phillies are planning to shake up the roster to finally win the World Series in the next few seasons. What is being rumored about them now?

Miami Marlins division rivals are expecting to have a busy off-season.

The Philadelphia Phillies had a good season....for the most part. They won the division for the first time since the 2011 season and were the second seed in the National League. The only problem was a surprisingly early National League Division Series. It was still better than the Miami Marlins, who didn't even make the playoffs.

Philly are unlikely to trade any of their core players like 1B Bryce Harper, DH Kyle Schwarber, SS Trea Turner and Starting Pitchers Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. They can however potentially try to trade largely disappointing RF Nick Castellanos.

Trading Castellanos won't be easy. The 32 year old is a poor defender who batted just .254/.311/.431, with 23 home runs and 86 RBI in 162 games and 606 AB in 2024. He was worth a well below average 0.8 WAR and is still going for $20 million a season for the next two seasons. It's hard to see any team trading for him at this point.

I'm actually unclear who they will ultimately trade to fix their obvious areas of need. They did correctly identify their OF as one of their issues. They didn't however focus on their defense, at least as far as we know. GM Dave Dombrowski had this to say:

"Our ownership allows us to do a lot of things. But sometimes that’s not what you want. We have a lot of good star players on our team. So, read that as you would.”

I don't believe that the Philadelphia Phillies have a championship core, so they're an example of a big market team that the Miami Marlins shouldn't emulate at all.