Dear Jeffrey,
Is it okay if I call you Jeffrey? Of course it is. Allow me to be frank. I am a Phillies fan. That statement should not be taken personally. I just wanted you to know up front that I am not colored by the dewy eyed emotions of a lifelong Marlins fan. Perhaps if I had grown up in Tallahassee rather than Trenton then I would be staunchly defending that garish home run statue on internet forums or in the comments section to this very article rather than pantomiming projectile vomit whenever it pops up on television.
But I digress.
David Santiago/El Nuevo Herald/TNS
This letter is in response to the latest in what has become a disturbing string of outlandish actions originating from your office, namely the hiring of formerly larger than life (literally and figuratively) slugger Barry Bonds as the new Marlins hitting coach. Perhaps this hire was a misguided effort to emulate the St. Louis Cardinals hire of Mark McGwire as a hitting coach in 2009 and subsequently with the Dodgers in 2013, which has been seen as a resounding success on both fronts in recent years. However, if that is the case then it has missed the mark, as most of your actions do, and should be seen as yet another misstep in management’s effort to at best imitate a successful franchise.
Let’s cut to the quick. For nigh on a decade now it seems that your decision making has always trended towards what is fashionable instead of what is smart. Barry Bonds is the latest in a long list of high profile but ultimately doomed hires and fires. You blame everyone on the Marlins for their failure, but perhaps that blame is misplaced.
I, like many other baseball minds, have serious reservations about Bonds’ ability to fulfill the duties of his new position. ESPN writer and analyst Jayson Stark was quoted as saying that he “Can’t get my head around how this is going to work”. He also recounted a story regarding Bonds’ attitude towards shifting in baseball where Bonds told Stark to, “Write this down: It don’t work man, it don’t work.”
Bonds passed that same information on to Philadelphia first baseman Ryan Howard several years ago during a period where the lefty was struggling to adapt to being one of the most shifted hitters in the National League. Barry simply told him that, “If you change the way you hit, they win.” Now, as a Phillies fan I can attest to the fact that Ryan Howard did very little winning in the years he spent flailing away at low outside breaking pitches. This statement indicates a stubbornness and failure to empathize with hitters who can’t club a baseball into the next zip code as well as a reluctance to adapt to modern changes in the way the game is played.
But maybe that’s just my non-steroid addled mind making silly rationalizations again.
Having said that, your decisions on personnel, though dubious as they have been (Ozzie Guillen anyone?) have arguably been less harmful than your financial decisions.
In 2012, after a controversial statement supporting Fidel Castro, then Manager Ozzie Guillen was fired with three years and 7.5 million dollars remaining on his contract. Most recently in 2015 Manager Mike Redmond was fired only 40 games into a contract extension running through 2017. Dan Jennings, the front office man turned manager was let go to clear way for Don Mattingly mere months ago. Jennings is supposedly owed 4.5 million dollars through 2018 according to the Sun Sentinel. In addition to that, catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia is still owed 7 million dollars according to Spotrac.com after he was released by the team in 2015.
These millions of dollars should have been used to add talent to the 25th ranked payroll in the majors as of the writing of this piece (spotrac.com). It really can’t be said that you haven’t had all of the advantages in the world. The Marlins benefit from what is arguably the largest piece of the revenue sharing pie (a hotly debated number in the neighborhood of 50 million dollars). Not to mention the fact that the lime green monstrosity of a stadium now gracing downtown Miami cost taxpayers approximately 355 million dollars compared to the team’s paltry contribution of 155 million.
But let’s bring this letter back around to what got me so fired up in the first place:
Barry Bonds
His first press conference should have said it all. Sitting in front of the press, the conversation turned as it inevitably does to the topic of his Hall of Fame candidacy, and in that moment the glint in his eye gave the game away. Barry Bonds has not rejoined baseball to wake up at six o’clock in the morning to be the first person to the ballpark in spring training. Barry Bonds is not becoming a coach to teach Dee Gordon to take a walk every once in a while so that he doesn’t lose 50 points off of his OBP this season. No, Barry Bonds took this position for the same reason that he does anything, to promote Barry Bonds.
So Jeffrey, I want you to think long and hard about what you’re doing. You have put the fate of your 325 million dollar cleanup hitter into the hands of an egotist who probably doesn’t know the definition of sabermetrics. You have added another in a long line of controversial names to the staff of a team that has been in the headlines for all of the wrong reasons. And finally you have reinforced to the baseball world what has been long speculated: That your behavior has been schizophrenic, reckless, and borderline incomprehensible.
But what do I know? I am, after all, a sad Phillies fan pining for the days of 2008. As Bonds said of his new students during his first day at Marlins camp, “I hope they don’t think they know more than me, because they don’t.”
Maybe we don’t. For your sake Mr. Loria, I hope he’s right.
Feature Image by Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
