Miami Marlins Need To Make Themselves An Aroldis Chapman

Past Miami Marlins Closer Approaches

For a while, the Miami Marlins were known for finding hidden gems.

Benitiez, Jones, Joe Borowski, and Kevin Gregg all dramatically outperformed their contracts. The “Marlins closer” averaged 40 saves from 2004 to 2006, with Gregg producing a 30 save average during his two-year stint in the role. The Borowski signing still comes up on fantasy baseball podcasts- really the only content source where closers are discussed at length- to this day. Miami paid Borowski less than $10,000 per save in 2006, to the ire of sports agents everywhere. Sometimes, it pays to be cheap.

However, despite that success, the Miami Marlins have also been guilty of dramatically overpaying at times.

Heath Bell, anyone? Could be the biggest free agent bust in team history. Fifteen years prior, Miami arguably swung and missed on another expensive relief option. In the first year of his massive extension, Robb Nenn almost doubled his ERA from 1996, and had the worst season of his career. To be fair, he did win a World Series. That contract, and Bell’s, were offloaded less than a year after they were signed. And that’s just money- the prospect toll might actually be worse. Ugueth Urbina and Fernando Rodney were scarcely better than the existing players on the MLB roster, and only cost All-Star caliber talents in return.

Lastly, there have also been a few times the Miami Marlins dramatically misevaluated their in-house talent.

One could easily argue Gary Sheffield is the best player in Marlins history. Yet, WAR aside, it would be a much harder argument to say Trevor Hoffman didn’t have a better career. It doesn’t help that Sheffield’s 1997 was easily the worst of his prime seasons. But that’s quibbling, and besides the point. The point here is that in more recent years, Brad Hand and Andrew Miller both enjoyed multiple seasons producing at the elite level the Marlins need from their ninth inning man. And that both did so after years of mediocre performance as a middling starter for Miami.

So what’s the solution? Glad you asked.