Miami Marlins Need Outside Help, And They Need It Yesterday

The Miami Marlins are fast moving from being plucky to being the Mets- the time has come to bring in outside help for the MLB roster.

Long before this punishing gauntlet of a season began for the Miami Marlins, a proud tradition was established in MLB:

One can never make a trade until July.

Protocol requires that all teams spend three months determining whether or not you have a chance to contend in a given season, even if you’re the Pittsburgh Pirates. Occasionally, the pre-July trade is allowed, but clubs should expect to be talked about behind their back by other organizations. Make a trade in May, and you better be the Rays- otherwise expect to be shunned at the next GM meeting.

Obviously, the above description is being a bit extreme. There’s a reason they say the MLB season is a marathon and not a sprint. Two months is often the minimum time for an average team to reach a meaningful conclusion about what their roster is capable of achieving. At least half the league still thinks they are contenders, even if half of them are going to end up being very wrong. Both the 2003 and 2006 Marlins hadn’t shown any signs of being worth investing in based on their April/May performance. The end result for both those teams was something very different from what the early evidence suggested.

There are valid reasons not to make moves too early. That being said, the policy does still smack a bit too much of “just being the way things have always been done” rather than being something that always should be done.

Which brings us to the 2021 Miami Marlins, who played a division rival earlier this week and fielded a lineup that included four hitters batting below the Mendoza line. In late May.

Okay, I am including the pitcher in that count. Three are still far too many players who can’t hit .200 though. It’s not as if this is still the first two weeks of the season, when players are still finding their swing. Two months is a reasonable sample size, and all three of the offending hitters have track records extending past 2021 that suggest progress isn’t necessarily coming for them any time soon. That list of four is also excluding an MLB career .140 hitting prospect who was making his season debut in Lewin Diaz, and Magneuris Sierra, who has a slugging percentage less than thirty points ahead of that .222 average.

That’s simply not a position an MLB team should ever find themselves in. Be they contenders or rebuilders, it’s an embarrassment.

Earlier this week, I suggested the Miami Marlins would be wise to at least consider making a major trade this summer. However, that potential transaction likely is best left to July. Preferably before July 30th, but still July.

Doing something to avoid ever being in the kind of lineup situations the Marlins (and many other teams in this injury filled season) have had to deal with this week though? That needs to happen right now.

Immediately. Pronto. Yesterday even.

Somewhere, in some organization, there is a fourth outfielder or utility infielder, or a career journeyman in the minors waiting for a chance with some organization that would honestly be good enough to actually be worth a couple of wins over the next couple weeks.

Check in with Yankees on Derek Dietrich. Pick a Diamondback. Or a Tiger. Or an Oriole. A quick review of any of those rosters yields multiple names that would be enormously useful right about now for Miami.

Now, if the Marlins front office decides they don’t want to trade for an All-Star caliber bat when the best they could hope for is a winning record and a first round playoff exit, fine. We value the meaning of that to this fanbase and young roster differently, but fine.

But if they keep burning through the season with their fingers in their ears, saying “next man up” and “it’s early” to anyone who questions their lineup decisions….they are going to quickly burn through all the goodwill they earned with last season’s good work.

Be better, Marlins.