The Feesh didn’t go cloacas-up because of who they brought in. They tanked because of who they didn’t get rid of during the orfseason. I wrote repeatedly, all through the orfseason and into the spring, that the Feesh needed an RBI guy, a situational hitter with some pop, not another tablesetter like Reyes. Their RISP was awful last season and not real good the season before that, so what was the point of getting more guys on base when no one was reliably driving them in? So here they are at the very bottom of the heap in RISP. If there are stats on advancing baserunners I don’t doubt that they’re at the bottom there too.

Bell was the horrible exception – you perhaps could have anticipated he wasn’t going to be Mr. Lights-Out given the falloff in his strikeout numbers last season, but really, no one without ESP or a crystal ball or the ghost of Shoeless Joe whispering in his ear could reasonably have been expected to call Bell’s cetacean-sized bellywhop this year. Likewise, it would have been pretty difficult based on past performance alone to have anticipated how completely Gaby Sanchez would implode. Coghlan, well, he never really figured in the Feesh’s plans as anything but a pine rider so seeing him knocked through the ropes was sad but not especially significant.

But the worst of it was hanging on to the Hanster, to Black Hole Buck and to Tweeter in the face of solid evidence that they were simply not the players they were supposed to be. Tweeter especially came up in trade discussions all orfseason long, especially in talks about Matt Garza and Aramis Ramirez, but the Rainbow Warriors’ notochord trust protected him as if he was hung with a franchise tag even though he had batted in the 240s most of the season with a miserable .146 RISP and established himself solidly as a “swing hard in case you hit it” solo homer jockey with an acute inability to advance runners and a marked disposition to kill rallies with DP grounders or popouts at critical moments.

Hanster was recovering from shoulder surgery over the Weenter so the Feesh were limited in what they might has asked for him, but they repeatedly made comments about how the team would be “built around” him – a propensity Slobbering Ozzie continued to indulge right on up to just before the break. If they were trying to magnify his value in order to receive best value for damaged goods with this absurd PR campaign, OK, I could see that, but they proceeded as though they actually expected him miraculously to reverse his two-season decline, become at least less of a dead weight in terms of morale, and return to 2009 form. Now they’re going to have to eat most of his inflated salary to get rid of him.

John Buck is a special problem. When he was signed orfseason before last I was aghast at what he was paid and at the length of his contract. By the end of last season the magnitude of this particular disaster was apparent. No one is going to take this guy for more than the league minimum; most players with his offensive stats would have been sent down or DFA’d months ago. I don’t know how they deal with this; they are well and truly sandbagged. In obtaining Brantley they may have a future option at catcher. I don’t doubt that while all eyes are on Turner, he was a key part of the deal with a hard sidelong look at the singularity batting eighth. They will surely try to dump him but may just throw up their hands and bite Buck like a bullet – unless they luck out, a contender loses their catcher to the DL bigtime, and gets desperate.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/2012-mlb-postseason-world-series-prediction-detroit-tigers-to-win-it-all-032612

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/2012-mlb-award-winners-predictions-miguel-cabrera-hanley-ramirez-cole-hamels-felix-hernandez-032112

And in the middle of it, Selig laughs, spittle flying everywhere.

Then, not surprisingly, when the calender turned and they were playing AL East teams they got butt pummeled.

Either way, half the hype was the Pujols chase, and had that panned out, who knows? Reyes gives them better defense at short, and offensively isn’t really much of a downgrade on what Hanley gave them last year.

Lost in the hype was that they didn’t end up with Pujols, Cespedes, or Wilson, and they pretty much just added Reyes and Buerhle….and Bell, if you really consider that an addition outside of payroll.

I see it as a team taking a shot, and it not working out. Hanley didn’t make it back to his All Star form at the plate, Johnson hasn’t been himself, Bell imploded, and Morrison & Sanchez didn’t take that next step. Now management can take a look at what’s not working and try to fix it.

Although, trading one of your top prospects for half a season of Carlos Lee is pretty head-scratching, even if he’s a big improvement over what you had.

People can rip the Marlins if they want to, and surely the team deserves some of that heat, but their method has produced 2 WS champion teams in the last decade plus. Not too many teams can say the same. Perhaps they are admitting (the obvious) that they are not going to win big this year, but they still have a number of years with some of their big stars like Reyes and Stanton and others who they signed in the off season. If this gives them a better chance to win in 2013-2016, why not make some moves?

If they want to rip anyone, rip Heath Bell. If he converts the 6 saves he blew, the Marlins record would be one game behind that Braves (not sure if any of those BS came against the Braves, which would skew things even further).

So they were supposed to just hoarde all that new money they have pouring in from their new stadium the city of Miami paid for?

What’s ironic about Rosenthal ripping the Marlins is that he and reporters like him are responsible for inflating the hype and expectations of teams like this in search of a narrative for their columns. In other words, if Rosenthal and his cohorts didn’t spend the entire offseason telling us how different things are in Miami, the Marlins wouldn’t be considered any more disappointing than Philly, AZ, Milwaukee, Boston etc.

Buster Olney ‏@Buster_ESPN

The great Marlins’ comet of 2012: Well, that was interesting.

They got great value in the trade.

Plus, if you realize you are wrong (or were wrong), then you act on it…you don’t deny it and go blissfully along. When you realize you aren’t as good as you thought and are out of it, you maximize asset value for the future, which is exactly what they did.

…and anyone that thought adding Reyes and an over-rated reliever while replacing Vasquez (who was very good last year) with Buerle was going to convert a team that finished 72-90 last into a contender wasn’t being realistic….better to realize it early than late.