Kuzul

I really don’t get some of the moves the Florida Marlins make sometimes. For instance, they just released LHP Renyel Pinto and signed Armando Benitez to a minor league contract. Really?

How could the Marlins possibly think Benitez is better for their organization than Pinto? I really can’t comprehend the thinking.

Pinto is a 27-year-old, serviceable left-handed reliever who has a fastball around 90 mph. This year he had a 2.70 ERA and struck out 16 in 16.2 IP. Does he walk too many batters? Sure he does. He has nine in those 16.2 IP.

But I am confident in saying that the Marlins could have worked with Pinto to correct his issues. At 27, there is still plenty of time to get better.

Benitez on the other hand can’t be helped. He is 37-years-old and hasn’t pitched in the majors since he was a member of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2008. He hasn’t posted an ERA under three since 2004 with these same Marlins.

I actually saw Benitez pitch last year as a member of the Newark Bears. He was making the glove pop that night, but I really don’t see it happening at the major league level.

I am sorry, but I just don’t see how the Marlins can view Benitez more valuable to their franchise than Pinto. It just doesn’t make sense.

You can follow The Ghost of Moonlight Graham on Twitter @ theghostofmlg

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What an unbelievable day it was in sports yesterday! How about that soccer game!

When Landon Donovan scored that goal, I screamed, “YES!” in my office. I felt bad because one of the girls on my team was giving a demo of our product and I completely threw her off.

I am pretty sure that is not in the being a good manager manual.

We also saw a 10-hour tennis match yesterday. A 10-hour tennis match! I can’t even sleep for 10 hours, let alone play a highly competitive tennis match.

Unfortunately, there was one guy who didn’t think yesterday was a great day in sports. His name is Fredi Gonzalez.

The Florida Marlins fired Gonzalez and two coaches yesterday. The Marlins replaced Gonzalez with minor-league manager Edwin Rodriguez on an interim basis.

Can’t say I’m really shocked by this.

The Marlins wanted to fire Gonzalez at the end of last year, but decided to bring him back for another season. Gonzalez’s fate was sealed, however, due to the Marlins slow start, coupled with his incident with star player Hanley Ramirez earlier this season.

Despite the Marlins being two games under .500 (34-36) entering last night’s action, they have been playing better as of late, so the timing of the move is a bit curious.

I guess Marlins’ owner Jeffrey Loria is hoping for the same results in 2010 as he got in 2003 when he fired Jeff Torborg 38 games into the season.

The Marlins replaced Torborg with Jack McKeon and the team went on to win the World Series. I believe Loria will seek another high-profile manager to replace Gonzalez/Rodriguez.

That manager is Bobby Valentine.

Valentine managed the Texas Rangers when Loria owned the organization’s Triple-A team in Oklahoma from 1989 to 1992. So there is a connection.

Even if they do hire Valentine, I am not sure how much a difference he is going to make. It’s hard to win when your team has a mediocre bullpen and a lousy defense.

Here is how I think the managing carousel will break down:

Florida Marlins: Bobby Valentine

Baltimore Orioles: Buck Showalter

Atlanta Braves: Fredi Gonzalez (when Bobby Cox retires, of course)

You can follow The Ghost of Moonlight Graham on Twitter @ theghostofmlg

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The Florida Marlins have struggled this season, and Fredi Gonzalez could have been one of the many reasons why.

Florida has faced many problems. Some of the biggest involved the bullpen and the lack of offensive production.

Yet, I do not think any of these issues have to do with Gonzalez and his managing.

The rumors of Gonzalez getting canned have floated around since last year, once Bobby Valentine started looking for a job. I took this as a great surprise since Fredi, with almost nothing, nearly took this team to the playoffs.

Gonzalez has been fantastic for the Marlins, taking control and helping this young team through consistent growing pains. Yet, as Marlins fans, we have to ask ourselves the question.  

Is the change necessary?

From my point of view, the change will do some good. If the Marlins land Bobby Valentine, they could possibly change things in a positive way. Taking new approaches to situations could pull this Florida team in another direction. 

A similar situation happened in 2003.

Jeff Torborg led  Florida to a terrible start. Then along came Jack McKeon, who gave the Marlins new life. He also guided them to the playoffs, where Florida eventually beat the Yankees to capture a World Series title.

I don’t want to say firing Gonzalez will be all fine and dandy. We won’t know the outcome for a few weeks. But from my point of view, firing Gonzalez wasn’t necessary.

What was—and still is—necessary is getting the Marlins decent bullpen help. 

The other thing that grinds my gears is that if Jeffrey Loria invested more money into this team, we would not be having any managerial issues. Instead, we would probably be the best team in the league.

But since we are stuck with the worst owner in baseball, they shouldn’t be pinning all the blame on Gonzalez, one of the finest managers in the National League.

To answer the question of this article, the Marlins are not making a mistake. Instead, they are heading in a different direction, and I’m sure Fredi understands this.

Although this action isn’t necessary, it will hopefully give this Marlins team new life, and the opportunity to make wrongs right.

Gonzalez won’t take this so hard.

After all, he has a job in Atlanta waiting on his doorstep.

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In 2006, first-year manager Joe Girardi led the inexperienced Florida Marlins to a 78-84 record. The team, which started six rookies, became the only club to pass the .500 mark after being 20 games below earlier in the season. Four rookie starting pitchers—Josh Johnson (who now has the NL’s third-best ERA), Ricky Nolasco, Scott Olsen, and Anibal Sanchez—each won at least 10 games.

Florida became the first organization to achieve that feat, and the Marlins nearly made the playoffs as the NL Wild Card. For his efforts, Girardi earned National League Manager of the Year.

And a pink slip.

Rumor had it that Girardi didn’t get along with owner Jeffrey Loria and president David Samson. Along came Fredi Gonzalez, a long-time coach in the Marlins’ minor league system and a former third base coach for the Atlanta Braves.

Friendly and welcoming, Gonzalez was the opposite of Girardi’s hard-nosed demeanor.

The following year, Florida finished in last place with a 71-91 record and virtually the same lineup. Gone was Girardi’s discipline and accountability for mental and physical mistakes. Instead, in charge was a manager who wanted to be everyone’s friend and who answered directly to the ownership.

Last year, Girardi led the stacked New York Yankees to a World Series championship in just his second season. Gonzalez, meanwhile, faced trouble in South Florida despite garnering NL Manager of the Year honors.

Superstar Hanley Ramirez, recently taken out of a game for a lack of hustle, doesn’t give it his all through a 162-game season. He would go on to criticize Gonzalez, and make no mistake that Ramirez is more important to the organization than a manager with a 276-279 career record.

Players like Dan Uggla continue to swing at the same bad pitches for six years. Relief pitcher Renyel Pinto took the mound in key situations for several seasons despite a lack of control.

Lineup confusion helped the Tampa Bay Rays defeat the Marlins in a vuvuzela-fueled game Saturday night. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the same air horns that express triumph during the FIFA World Cup indirectly led to Gonzalez’s firing?

With Triple-A New Orleans’ Edwin Rodriguez as the interim manager, it will be interesting to see whether Bobby Valentine is asked to coach the Marlins. Before this season started, Gonzalez was considered on the hot seat and Valentine was seen as a prime target to take over.

Many would call Loria, Samson, and Larry Beinfest, the president of baseball operations, crazy for believing that Florida has been underachieving. What with the fifth-lowest payroll in baseball, just two of the teams below them have better records (the first place Texas Rangers and San Diego Padres).

But through 70 games, the Marlins remain two games below .500, just as they were last year. Though the bullpen can’t be blamed on Gonzalez, it’s about time this season stopped from spiraling out of control.

So long, Fredi.

Have a great time coaching the first-place Braves next season as a replacement to legend and friend Bobby Cox.

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Embarrassing. Unbelievable. Head-scratching.

No, I’m not speaking of the seventeen Florida Marlins relievers to put on a jersey this season.

This morning’s firing of all-time winning manager, Fredi Gonzalez, will more than likely go down as the dumbest thing the Jeffrey Loria/Larry Beinfest regime has been a part of. 

That’s saying quite a bit, considering this is the same power tandem who pulled the trigger on a deal that sent a future Hall of Famer (Miguel Cabrera) to the Detroit Tigers for a left-handed pitcher who can’t get hitters out in Double-A Jacksonville (Andrew Miller), a center fielder who supposedly has five tools, but looks more like Reggie Abercrombie every day (Cameron Maybin), and a veritable “who cares?” of minor league lifers.

Loria’s statement to the media?

“We believe we can do better and be better. We owe it to our fans to put this team in the best possible position to win. Everyone knows how I feel about winning. That’s the reason we’re making this change.”

If I could offer a suggestion: in order to put the team in the best position to win, you have to actually invest in the team. 

Sure, they’ve made long-term deals with primadonna Hanley Ramirez and Cy Young candidate Josh Johnson. Their skills and talent go to waste when you piece together a bullpen whose most productive member is Leo Nunez.

No lead is ever safe!

The bargain bin method used to work (see also: Joe Borowski, Todd Jones, Kiko Calero). However, when teams (and agents) saw this ploy, bigger deals were made with pitchers who would normally take the league minimum salary and cash in the next year. This left the scrap heap even more bare than before.

At the end of the day, this ownership has made it very difficult for Marlins fans (all 10 of us) to continue staying committed to the team. 

Fredi did everything that was asked of him, only to be toyed with in the offseason by an owner who thought “Vuvuzela Night” was a great idea.

This is the same owner who sold tickets to a perfect game thrown by the opposing pitcher , post-game. I’m thinking Rachel Phelps of “Major League” fame would make a better owner at this point.

At least then the team would have a pipeline to the California Penal League.

To be honest, Fredi is better off. Now he can go a fulfill his destiny to be the apparent heir to Bobby Cox with the Atlanta Braves, just like Joe Girardi did with the New York Yankees. He deserves better and come the offseason, he’ll get it.

In the meantime, the Marlins can enjoy the same mediocrity with the same missing pieces, but with an interim manager who’ll get the same axe soon enough.

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The Florida Marlins have fired manager Fredi Gonzalez, naming Edwin Rodriguez his replacement, but only on an interim basis.

Rodriguez has spent the past one-and-a-half seasons as manager of Triple-A New Orleans.

The team also said Wednesday it would be dismissing bench coach Carlos Tosca and hitting coach Jim Presley.

Florida moved to 34-36 following Tuesday night’s win over the Baltimore Orioles. Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria says he’s making the change because he believes the team can “do better and be better.”

Gonzalez was 276-279 in his three-plus years as Marlins manager. Sitting at 34-36, the Marlins began the day fourth in the NL East, 7.5 games behind the first-place Atlanta Braves.

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You would think major league teams would learn from previous ill conceived giveaways and promotions gone awry.

The most famous promotions gone wrong are the Cleveland Indians selling Stroh’s Beer in eight ounce cups for 10 cents and Disco Demolition Night at a Chicago White Sox game.  The offer included an all you can drink deal so by the time the disco demolition was about to take place, most of the 25,134 fans were full of alcohol and chaos ensued at Municipal Stadium.

When the the Indians and Rangers became embroiled in a brawl, the fans swarmed the field wielding knives and chains and some were throwing bottles at the Rangers.

Back to last night, the players on both teams were not happy with the sound of the 15,000 airhorns given to fans by the Marlins. You would think Marlins management would have known they were asking for trouble and they got it when their manager Fredi Gonzalez was tossed from the game over a lineup card dispute which may be blamed on a lack of communication due to the excessive noise.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=300619128

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Oh dear Lord, please say it isn’t true.

According to the Florida Marlins’ official website, the first 15,000 fans that come to Saturday’s game versus the Tampa Bay Rays will be the proud owners of miniature Marlins vuvuzelas!

The team is calling them “air horns,” but don’t be fooled; they’re vuvuzelas.

See for yourself—visit the Marlins promotions and giveaways page and click on “Marlins Air Horn” under Saturday, June 19th.

If that’s not a vuvuzela, I don’t know what is.

Now, I don’t know whose genius idea this was, but my bet is that it was the same guy who thought of selling the Marlins’ unsold tickets to Roy Halladay’s perfect game as souvenirs.

This is a bad idea, and here’s why.

Attendance Problems

The Marlins have enough trouble filling the awful monstrosity that is Sun Life Stadium. Do the public relations people really think that people are going to want to stay for a game while 15,000 fans are going to town on those over-sized kazoos? No.

That’s two questionable P.R. moves in less than a month. Kudos on the new stadium with the fish tanks behind home plate, though.

Irate Parents

Okay, you’re going to take the kids to see the first place Tampa Bay Rays. I know how it is because I lived in Kansas City for two years and we would always try to make it to the games when the good teams came to town.

Anyway, the kids are all excited about seeing Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, Carlos Pena—and Wes Helms, of course.

So, you get to the game, hand the guy at the gate your tickets, and what do you get in return?

Vuvuzelas! One for each one of you!

Do you know what the worst part is?

You don’t just have to listen to them for three hours during the game; you have to listen to them during the car ride home and for the following week, until they mysteriously disappear or accidentally get broken.

It’ll go something like this:

Dad: Oh no, what happened to your vuvuza—whatcha-ma-call-it? (If he only knew.)

Johnny: It got lost.

Dad: You can’t find it? That’s too bad, Buddy. (Wink.)

Johnny: It was my favorite.

Dad: I liked it, too. It was a pretty cool idea those Marlins had.

Johnny: Yeah. Do you think they’ll do it again?

Dad: Maybe. (God, I hope not.)

Johnny: What could’ve happened to it?

Dad: Hey, maybe it’s in your room. You should go clean it. (Oh snap, I’m clever!)

Back to the present.

See, I told you it was a bad idea. Look at all the family discord it could cause!

The point is that vuvuzelas do not belong in the stands of baseball stadiums. Baseball is supposed to be “America’s pastime,” and vuvuzelas are distinctly South African.

It’s a simple culture clash, and baseball and vuvuzelas just don’t mix.

The horns have already drawn criticism from fans at the World Cup, and a noisy fan was asked to leave a Yankees game for blowing a vuvuzela.

Officials at Wimbledon have also released a statement saying noisemakers of any kind (vuvuzelas included) will be banned from the tennis tournament.

I have this message for the Florida Marlins public relations personnel: Please, for the love of baseball and everything sacred, reconsider this ill-conceived, very poor promotional idea.

Author’s Question: What would you do if you were seated near someone blowing a vuvuzela at a baseball game?

Leave your comments! 

You can follow Mike on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeMacOnBR

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Many of today’s players do not hustle. Hanley Ramirez and Luke Scott are two players who recently demonstrated their values.

They could learn a few things from Willie Mays.

During the middle of May, in the first inning of a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Hanley Ramirez fouled an Edwin Jackson pitch off his left shin. He stayed in the game, and ended the inning by banging into a double play.

With two runners on base in the Diamondback’s half of the second inning, Tony Abreu hit a looping fly ball to short left field that fell safely near Ramirez. As he went after the ball, Hanley accidentally kicked it about 100 feet toward the left-field corner.

Ramirez jogged after the ball, as both runners scored and Abreu ended up at third base.

Ramirez was taken out of the game the next inning by Florida Marlins’ manager, Fredi Gonzalez, for not hustling.

“Hanley left the game because we felt — he got smoked in the ankle — but we felt whether he was hurt or not hurt or whatever it was, we felt that the effort wasn’t there that we wanted,” Gonzalez said.

“There’s 24 guys out there that are busting their butts. Cody Ross got hit with a ball 95 mph and it wasn’t hit or thrown any slower and he stayed in the game making diving plays and battling, got two hits and an RBI.”

On June 10, the Baltimore Orioles were playing New York’s second-favorite baseball team at Camden Yards.

With the teams tied with three runs each, Luke Scott batted with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning. He hit A.J. Burnett’s second pitch to deep right field.

Scott tossed his bat into air and started trotting to first base, thinking he had hit a harmless pop fly ball, but to everyone’s amazement, the ball kept carrying away from the occasionally defensively challenged Nick Swisher.

The ball eluded Swisher’s glove, Scott started to run, and because the ball ricocheted away from Swisher, Scott wound up at third.

Orioles’ announcers Gary Thorne and Jim Palmer laced into Scott something fierce.

Palmer : “Luke Scott, again on Sunday, he didn’t run, and he didn’t run on this ball either, but he gets lucky because Swisher doesn’t know how far it’s gonna carry. Scott thinks he popped it up. You just can’t do that.”

Thorne : “Sorry, I just don’t get it.”

Palmer : “On Sunday, Scott said I gave you everything I had. We know that’s just not true.”

Willie Mays spent 21 months in the army, missing most of the 1952 and all of the 1953 seasons.

The 22-year-old Willie returned to the New York Giants at the beginning of spring training in March 1954. He signed for $13,000.

Willie Mays loved to play ball. It didn’t matter if he played for the Giants, on the streets of Harlem, or in a sandlot game.

For Willie and many others of his era, the emphasis was on the game, not on the money.

“They won’t have trouble with me. I like to play.”

Willie’s enthusiasm carried over to others. He was the team leader without being a general. Willie Mays led by example.

Hanley Ramirez and Luke Scott also led by example.

As Chester A. Riley used to say, “What a revoltin’ development this is.”

References:

Effrat, Louis. “Mays Marks Return to Giants WIth 400-Foot Homer at Phoenix.” New York Times . 3 March 1954, p. 33.

Effrat, Louis. “Lockman, Gomez Arrive at Camp; Mays Gets $13,000 Contract.” New York Times . 4 March 1954, p. 35.

1954 New York Giants

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The Philadelphia Phillies and the Florida Marlins wrapped up a three game set on Thursday at Citizen’s Bank Park on a cool and breezy evening.

The game matched one of the most veteran and experienced teams in the league against a Florida Marlins team full of promising, developing young talent.

Unfortunately for the Marlins, much of this promising, developing young talent may end up being the stars of tomorrow for some other team.

The Marlins have spent most of their existence developing young talent and, just as it begins to ripen, selling it off to big market teams for the fresh fruit of tomorrow. Whether this is because of a small market, an outdated stadium, or an overly-thrifty owner, is anyone’s guess.

What we do know is that the Marlins have cut ties to so many future stars that they make up an entire All Star team, a Florida Marlins Alumni Association of sorts.

All is not lost, though. The Florida Marlins open up a new stadium in 2012, and will then be able to actually afford to resign some of their young developing talent.

Let’s hope, for their sake, that they have any left by the time 2012 rolls around.

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