****Official 2012 MIAMI MARLINS Thread****

Adam Greenberg — the man whose sole big league plate appearance resulted in a beaning — is going to un-Moonlight Graham himself in tonight’s Marlins-Mets game. He won’t start, but Ozzie Guillen said he will pinch hit him at some point in the game, likely when the outcome is not on the line.


p.s. Moving into a state-of-the-art ballpark following an offseason of big spending was supposed to equal huge attendance numbers for the Marlins, but instead Miami ranks dead last in first-year attendance among the 11 new ballparks to open since 2001.

 

I think I brought this up in May or June about the attendance. What I remember was that people said it was because of the Heat being in the playoffs and I'm sure the reasons for them not drawing after that is because the team was bad. However, don't you think people would buy tickets before the season started to see the new park etc, regardless of how good/bad the team was? Especially with all the moves they made in the offseason, there was tons of buzz with this team. I really think, and I swear I'm not trying to troll anyone, that Miami is just a poor baseball town, much like St. Petes is for the Rays.

 

People did buy tickets before the season started.

New baseball stadium buzz doesn't count for what it used to.

And it's tough to say how good of a baseball town Miami is, considering that there are so many people living or staying there for months who aren't originally from the area.

 

Oh yeah absolutely, I agree with that. Again not a knock on any Marlin fans, easpecially on this board. It's possible it's just not a great location to have a pro baseball team. St. Petes obviously isn't one either and the Rays have been good for 4 straight years now.

 

It would help if the team didn't suck. If we were winning we would have better attendance, IMO.

 

Beinfest and Hill aren't available for their usual media appearances today. Could be a sign.

 

3 knuckleballs thus resulting in a K.....

good for him...

 

When Disney makes the film based on his story it will be a grand slam with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th....

 

And Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan, Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, and somehow Josh Johnson will all be pitching at him simultaneously.

 

Marlins trade Bell in 3 team trade!

We get 3B Yordy Cabrera from Oakland
Oakland gets Chris Young
Arizona gets Bell, Chris Pennington and cash

Not sure on the amount of cash yet.

Woo!!!

 

That's actually a really good trade, I like it quite a bit. Not just because we get rid of Bell and his insanity, but I think it works well for all teams involved.

 

The cash was from us, btw.

 

Arizona is paying $13 million of Bell's money. So we get rid of him and get a prospect back, all at the price of one third of Bell's deal, basically what we would have paid him this year anyway.

I like it.

 

Yup. We are picking up $8 of the remaining $21 million from his contract. Not bad.

 

Bell was almost entirely the circus, IMO. His comments about Ozzie not having his back proved that he doesn't live in reality.

I'm somewhat optimistic that, since Bell was entirely a Loria idea/acquisition/contract, hopefully this now means Loria is going to back off his Steinbrenner fantasies.

 

Thank god.

 

Tried to tell folks what Bell was like in SD in 2011.

Fastball was straight as a string, he really was garbage in SD

 

I refuse to label a guy who actually tells the truth a circus act.

 

I guess this just means if any MLB team has a former San Diego Padre player who played while Kevin Towers was the GM no matter how good/bad they are or how much money they're making call up the Diamondbacks because they will take him.

Seriously really like the deal from Oakland's side to get a possible bounce back in Chris Young and like the deal for the Marlins for dumping Bell and only paying 8 million, I mean who cares if Cabrera ever plays a MLB game just dumping Bell is worth it. For Arizona zero clue why they wanted Bell, especially when they picked up Putz option and have Hernandez in the pen too.

 

Yup. Thank god Arizona is dumb.

 

Still not as dumb as the Dodgers.

 

So is Mike Lowell the manager yet?

 

I still think the Dodgers ripped us off, at least.

Nothing against Lowell, but I really hope this doesn't happen. Guillen does a good job, and it's not as if Lowell is going to come in and make a team that's now constructed of half-prospects into a playoff contender. Most useless change in the history of useless changes.

 

Yeah I think the return for Hanley was light.

And I don't get all the hype on Lowell. It seems like trying to hire former players without any managerial experience because it somewhat had positive results in St. Louis and Chicago is the new fad for some reason. That's not to say Lowell would or wouldn't be a good manager.

 

I thought the return for Bell and return for Hanley were all about getting rid of the contract burdens and bad decisions and even somewhat from the locker room distractions etc.....return was perfect if you believe that really.

 

For Bell yes absolutely but for Hanley I feel like that should have gotten a better return back for him. Seemed like they dumped him just to dump him. I wonder if they really shopped him around the league and what some of the other offers were.

 

I think the league realized he's not the same player he was from 07-09. He's still a good player. But good players shouldn't make 15+. I highly doubt they could of gotten much more.

 

Bell was a contract burden. I don't think Hanley was, nor do I think we were saving so much money by moving Hanley that it made receiving basically just Eovaldi worth it.

 

I don't know. Even if Hanley isn't the same player he was in from '07 to '09 for the last two years but as either a SS or 3B he's above league average. His contract isn't crazy either. At only 28 years old, I would have taken a flier on him for the next 2 years paying him 31.5 million until age 30.

 

We did shop him around. IIRC, the only team other than the Dodgers interested were the Athletics, but they wanted the Marlins to pay for a majority of the contract.

 

Sure, burdens are not only financial, true....but I think Hanley's cash was key to decision (it always is), along with his makeup and mindset.

 

We moved 31 million off our payroll for the next 2 seasons by trading Hanley. That's a significant amount.

 

I hated the Hanley trade too, but it's too early to tell one way or the other.

The fact of the matter is, if Hanley stays the same hitter he's been over the last two seasons, we crushed LA in that trade. We essentially traded a league average player for a young club controlled back of the rotation starter with moderate upside, while simultaneously clearing out $31 million in payroll.

That's highway robbery.

 

Hanley was closer to being worth his contract than Bell was to being worth his.

 

What? What does that have to do with what you said? You said ,"nor do I think we were saving so much money by moving Hanley that it made receiving basically just Eovaldi worth it."

We did save a lot of money moving Hanley. 31 million over the next 2 seasons.

 

I'm talking about the value of the player relative to the amount of money they are making. You're looking at the total dollar amount. I don't care about the total dollar amount, that's Loria's problem. I care about whether or not the player was living up to the money they were making. Hanley was closer to living up to his contract than Bell was.

Therefore, a pure salary dump of Bell's contract makes me happy, because he was owed $21m and was worth maybe $10 (dollars, not millions). Meanwhile, describing Hanley as a salary dump makes me unhappy, because he was a good enough player that he didn't need to be strictly salary dumped, and he should have garnered more compensation than just salary dump + Eovaldi. Salary dumps are not compensation.

 

Ok I misunderstood you. We'll have to wait and see on that. With Hanley's talent level you could end up right.

 

Ozzie Guillen fired.