The Miami Marlins are not going to the playoffs this season. Sadly, this isn't a surprise or a mystery. The Fish are sitting in last place in the NL East, already making controversial sell-off trades and making arguably meaningless explanations. It's time to take a closer look at what led this nightmare season to take place and who and what to put the blame on.
Management continues to fail the Miami Marlins and the fans.
Can we just skip ahead to the draft and the off-season? This has been such a disaster of a season that I sometimes find it hard to even process what happened. Let's start with bad luck. Perhaps the Miami Marlins would be closer to .500 if it wasn't for all of the bullpen mishaps. That's not just on bad luck though, that's also on Peter Bendix for not improving the bullpen in the off-season.
The other issue actually has nothing to do with Bendix or owner Bruce Sherman. The issue is all of the injuries to starting pitchers. That obviously could not have been predicted. Eury Perez being out for the season? Braxton Garrett missing the beginning of the season? Jesus Luzardo struggling due to injury and missing time? Edward Cabrera getting injured? The injuries could not have been predicted.
How about the needless pitching experiments? A.J. Puk and Sixto Sanchez combined for about 6 losses together. Replace them with ore competent starting pitchers and perhaps The Fish win at least 2 of those games. How about the obvious other issue? The Miami Marlins didn't bring in a much-needed DH to replace the outgoing Jorge Soler. A better lineup is always a good answer for any of the team's hitting struggles.
There's been a lot of reasons why the Miami Marlins are having such a terrible season. There's the lack of off-season improvements to the lineup and bullpen; a ridiculous amount of pitching injuries; bad decisions with starting pitchers and bad luck. Ultimately it's down to Bruce Sherman to spend more on the team, and on Peter Bendix to make better decisions.