MLB Daily: Marlins Hire Dan Jennings, A Man Without Any Prior Experience as New Manager, Remain a Joke
By Mike Cardillo
Welcome to a Monday edition of MLB Daily, a place where we’d also like to see the world in perfect harmony…
Is this a joke?: Baseball is a sport full of axioms and saying. Never make the first or last out of an inning at third base jumps to mind. After the events of the last 24 hours we can add another one to the list: Never trust Jeffrey Loria.
The nefarious, wildly disliked Marlins owner once again conned many in the baseball world that he was a reformed man. Signing Giancarlo Stanton to a contract worth over $325 million last year opened eyes around the sport. The Marlins went out and added a few pieces to their promising young core, too. By all accounts, the days of the franchise being a laughingstock for easy Internet headlines was over.
Nope.
In late April, the Marlins’ hinted at their classy ways releasing catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia at the same time he was activated from the paternity leave list. (The team’s official Twitter account announced the move.)
That transaction looks like peanuts compared to what transpired over the last 24+ hours. Sunday, the Marlins were almost no-hit by the Braves’ Shelby Miller. After the game, the team announced it fired Mike Redmond and bench coach Rob Leary. Miami is 16-22, not an out-and-out disaster but not exactly the start many envisioned for the improving team.
Dumping Redmond wouldn’t have raised too many eyebrows, except Loria and the rest of the Marlins brass decided to “promote” (or is it demote?) general manager Dan Jennings to the dugout where he’ll be the team’s sixth manager since 2010. The move draws criticism on two fronts. For one, Jennings has never managed. Let’s reiterate, a Major League Baseball team fired its manager in May to replace him with an executive with zero on-field experience. As Bob Nightengale notes in USA Today, the closest Jennings came to a Major League diamond before was a tryout at Yankees Single-A camp in 1984.
Hiring — or technically re-assigning — of Jenning, as skirts the “Selig Rule” of teams considering minority candidates for positions such as manager before making a decision. Ken Rosenthal notes this — and the Marlins’ track record of hiring minorities, which includes current President of Baseball Operations Michael Hill and former managers, including Ozzie Guillen.
Guillen’s name is worth mentioning since it’s the only working theory toward the Marlins making the Jennings decision that makes even the remote amount of sense. Loria doesn’t want to pay three managers. Guillen, fired in 2012, was owed $4 million. Of course the Marlins extended Redmond’s contract after the 2014 season through 2017. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, the Sun Sentinel lists it at $2.5 million. The team also owes former GM Larry Beinfest $2 million. Even so, whatever those costs were, plus a new manager isn’t going to bankrupt a team that is playing in a new ballpark and was willing to splash the cash on Stanton (long term, he still makes $6.5 million this year) and upping the payrolls nearly $25 million from a year ago to $69 million.
Then again, the Marlins save money by relying on team team president Dave Samson (and others) using weather apps to determine whether or not to close the roof of Marlins Park. This led to a rain delay on Opening Day.
If there’s a counterpoint here, perhaps, the Marlins want to test the limits of how much influence a manager can have over a team in-game. Given the copious amounts of data available, theoretically managing during the game could be like pressing a button — saying nothing about the impact a manager has over the clubhouse dynamic. If we’re lucky maybe this move will take us back to the days of George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner trying to make on-field decisions. Somewhere in Dallas, Jerry Jones nods his head in approval.
It’s also worth remembering many initial knee-jerk reactions lambasted the Marlins when they offloaded Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle to the Blue Jays. In retrospect, shedding that salary and acquiring prospects, namely Henderson Alvarez and Adeiny Hechavarria proved to be smart business. The Marlins did, too, flaunt conventional wisdom, at times, winning a World Series in 2003 with 72-year-old cigar-chomping Jack McKeon in the dugout. Granted, he was a baseball-lifer with four previous manager’s jobs.
But who are we kidding? This is Loria and the Marlins, a team that seems to thrive on being a total joke in the industry.
Oh wait, I take all that back. Jennings apparently coached high school baseball in Alabama in the 80s, so he might actually be over-qualified to serve as Loria’s on-field yes man through September.
Hindsight is 20/20: Sports fans are always ready to assign winners and losers immediately after trades or other big transactions happen. I always tend to like it when a trade works out for both sides, since that’s the point of making them. In the winter, when the Braves decided to dismantle their team, sending Jason Heyward to the Cardinals, it seemed like a somewhat lop-sided deal. Atlanta did get back Shelby Miller, who carried a no-hitter for 8 2/3 innings vs. the Marlins yesterday — which helped get Mike Redmond fired.
As far as acquiring assets in a trade, a young pitcher with no-hit ability — remember when he retired 27 straight back in 2013 — is about as good haul as you can acquire.
Heyward (.252/.310/.352) isn’t putting up huge numbers in St. Louis, but I still think it was a good decision for the Cardinals to make at the time. Heyward is a strong defensive player and can hit anywhere in the lineup. He’s a pending free agent, and if St. Louis lets him walk they might regret trading Miller away — saying nothing of Adam Wainwright’s fluke injury.
This deal will be worth re-exploring in November.
Masher: Bryce Harper continues to rake, missing the cycle by a double yesterday in San Diego.
He added an excuse-me style half-swing homer to the opposite field in left at Petco, no small feat. He now has a league-high 14 homers and an OPS+ of 208. Washington is now only a half-game behind the Mets in the NL East.
This & That: Mets rookie Noah Syndergaard — nicknamed Thor — picked up his first big league win on Sunday. … The Astros have won five straight and again have the best record in the American League. … The White Sox have also won five straight, moving to the .500 mark.
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