Peter Bendix and Bruce Sherman's plan for the Miami Marlins

Peter Bendix spoke with Craig Mish recently about The Fish's off-season and future plans. I wrote about the interview last week, but it made me think about the bigger picture. What really is Bruce Sherman's plan? Does he actually care about winning? What is Bendix's plan? Was he really planning to contend this year?

What is Bruce Sherman's actual plan for the Miami Marlins along with Peter Bendix?

Bruce Sherman doesn't have a reputation as an owner willing to spend. That is the reason why Derek Jeter allegedly left the ownership group. One of the more notable events of the Bruce Sherman ownership era, was his pushing out of GM Kim Ng and the hiring of Peter Bendix. This was a pretty big deal as Kim was the first female MLB GM and just helped lead the Miami Marlins to the playoffs. If he wanted her to leave it had to be for a serious reason.

Kim left because Sherman hired Bendix to be her supervisor. Why would he need to do that? Well, the farm system went from an elite one to a bottom one while she was in charge. The fact that Sherman cared enough about that to hire Bendix away from the Tampa Bay Rays, makes it pretty clear that he cares about the farm. It makes no sense for him to care about the farm, unless he wants sustained success.

It's also fair to assume that he doesn't want to spend much money, which is why he wants to emulate the Tampa system of winning with small payrolls and a deep farm. I can't argue that being a good system. So, what happened last off-season then? Why wasn't more of an effort done to follow-up on a playoff appearance?

My guess is that Peter Bendix didn't really believe in The Fish's success last season and wanted to see what he has first. That explains the lack of activity and a general standing pat of the front office. I'm not justifying any of this by the way, as I'm just trying to deduce what their plan must be.

Summarizing everything, Bruce Sherman does genuinely want to build a consistently successful team. He wants to do that through having an elite farm and a (most likely) low payroll. Peter Bendix didn't think that the Miami Marlins were that good and so didn't go all-in. He also didn't think that the team needed to rebuild, so didn't launch a fire sale. The result was a largely quiet off-season and now a losing season. Let's hope that the future will indeed look brighter.