The Miami Marlins do so many things wrong that it’s easy to start believing they do everything wrong.
It’s just not true.
Look at Dee Gordon. The Marlins made a great deal last December to get him from the Los Angeles Dodgers. If all goes well, maybe they can follow it up with a great deal this December to prove they want to keep Gordon long term.
Gordon said Wednesday morning on MLB Network that contract-extension talks have begun and added, “I think it’s going pretty well right now.” Joe Frisaro of MLB.com followed up with a tweet:
There’s no great rush. Gordon, who played for $2.5 million in 2015 in his first arbitration season, has three more years to go before free agency. But these are the Marlins, and every year without a long-term contract is a year to speculate.
Already this winter, there was one report they were planning to trade ace Jose Fernandez (followed by multiple reports that they actually weren’t). It was nothing new for the Marlins, who couldn’t get anyone to believe they were going to keep Giancarlo Stanton until he signed a 13-year, $325 million contract last winter.
They bring it on themselves. Under Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins rarely stick to a plan and regularly upset their fans.
So this winter, when the Marlins should be getting praise for hiring Don Mattingly as manager, signing pitching guru Jim Benedict away from the Pittsburgh Pirates and beefing up their professional scouting department, they upset people again by firing popular and talented announcer Tommy Hutton.
They can turn some of the talk back in their favor if they lock up Gordon, who won the Silver Slugger and the Gold Glove this month after winning the National League batting title last summer. He’s still young (27), he’s exciting and he’s exactly the kind of guy any team should want to keep.
So why didn’t the Dodgers keep him, especially when the terms of the trade required them to pay his 2015 salary? Good question, but one that will wait for another column. This one is about the Marlins, who can prove they don’t plan to watch Gordon play anywhere else.
For all the problems they had in their mess of a 91-loss season, the Marlins actually put together a nice group of young position players. Gordon and 26-year-old shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria might form the best double-play combination in the game. Stanton just turned 26.
The Marlins have a young ace in 23-year-old Fernandez, and like Gordon they can control him through 2018. Unlike Gordon, he’s represented by Scott Boras, who doesn’t like long-term deals pre-free agency and is constantly battling with the Marlins (recently over Marcell Ozuna, who will likely be traded this winter).
Gordon’s agents at the Beverly Hills Sports Council are more willing to talk, and Gordon recently told Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald he was open to a deal.
“I love it here,” he said.
He could love it even more with Mattingly, his manager when he became a first-time All-Star with the Dodgers in 2014. Gordon, who spent three years unsuccessfully trying to become a full-time player as a shortstop, thrived when the Dodgers moved him to second base after 2013.
Gordon led the league with 12 triples and 64 steals in what became his final season with the Dodgers. He got on base more often in his first year with the Marlins, thanks to the .333 batting average and the league-leading 205 hits.
He still doesn’t walk as much as you’d like for a leadoff hitter (only 25 times in 653 plate appearances in 2015). But he compensates for that somewhat with his speed. Gordon had 119 infield hits over the last two seasons, according to Baseball-Reference.com. No other hitter in baseball had even 80 (and no one else in the last five years had more than 50 in a single season).
There’s no reason to think he won’t keep doing the same thing for a while to come. There’s no reason to think he won’t be part of the next Marlins team that wins.
No reason, except that they still are the Marlins, the Jeffrey Loria Marlins, and their history has conditioned everyone to expect the worst.
So far with Dee Gordon, they’ve actually gotten the best. Perhaps they can even make it continue.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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