As much of a joke as you might consider the Miami Marlins, Jeffrey Loria's ownership hasn't been a complete disaster. Loria's 14 seasons as owner include five winning seasons and a World Series championship, and just one 100-loss season.
Then again, most of those winning seasons are getting hard to remember. Since Opening Day in 2011, the Marlins have won only 42 percent of their games and they're heading toward a 95-loss 2015.
When things were going well, the model was fairly simple and relatively effective: Spend some real money from time to time, but if those deals didn't work out, trade the veterans for younger players and reload for next year. And from 2002 through 2010, the Marlins lost more than 84 games just once.
The model hasn't been working lately. And there's little reason to think it's going to work again soon. From Clark Spencer's story in The Miami Herald about an ongoing front-office shakeup:
Already, sources said, some members of the player development and scouting staffs are either being reassigned to new roles or let go. Not only have the Marlins failed on the field, but their minor-league teams have also struggled and their farm system is bereft of top talent.
Their four top minor-league teams — from Single A up through Triple A — are either in last place or next-to-last. Only one minor-leaguer, former first-round pick Tyler Kolek, is listed among Baseball America’s Top 50 prospects, and Kolek is struggling at Low A Greensboro (North Carolina).
“It’s pretty bad,” ESPN baseball analyst Keith Law said of the Marlins’ farm system. “The system right now is not going to fill the short-term needs of the major-league club.”
The model doesn't work without cheap young talent. And while the Marlins do have some of that talent in the majors -- Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez most notably, but also Derek Dietrich and Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna (and Dee Gordon and Justin Bour if you think 27 is "young") -- they need more talent in the pipeline, and they're going to get that only by trading some of the aforemented talent.
And to be sure, there is some talent here. Enough for the Marlins to surprise some people. But only if nearly all of that talent is both healthy and productive, and this season hasn't been encouraging. What seems much more likely is that the Marlins will continue to flail about, with .500 constituting a rare good season.
I don't expect this to change while Jeffrey Loria owns the franchise. As the old saying goes, a fish rots from the head.
