FRZfishfan

I think the manager should definitely have his say on who is on the coaching staff. A buddy of mine who is quite close to the situation says that Bill Robinson was a crappy hitting coach, he didn't use video or other technology to help the hitters, relying on "old school" teaching methods. I don't know how true it is, but I think if the manager is going to be held accountable, then he should have the guys he wants coaching. That said, if Perry Hill is gone it would be a shame. He's awesome.

Bottom line is that a new stadium has to be part of the equation in order to have big attendance increases. I am a highly motivated Marlins fans with full season, season tix, but even I often fall into the temptation of just going home and watching the game on my couch in air conditioned comfort instead of driving an hour from my south beach place of employment sweating my ass off and then driving home an hour to west kendall to get home at 11:00 PM when I have to get up and do it all again the next day. For everyone that thinks our attendance sucks and that the Yankees are the gold standard should note that the 92 yankees drew less fans than the 2005 marlins. While it was 13 years ago it illustrates that even a team with 22 world championships at the time had trouble breaking the 2 million mark even in a market that is 5 times as large as ours. The 95 Yankees also drew less than the 2005 Marlins but that was the season after the strike so I don't consider that a fair comparison.

I was born in Philly and lived there until the summer after 2nd grade (I'm 36 now). Of course it was traumatic to move away from my friends and my life as I knew it. So I kept following my hometown teams. The Phillies, the Eagles, the Sixer and the Flyers (though I wasn't a big fan of B-Ball and Hockey at the time). I was triumphant when the fightin' Phils won in 1980. And I cried when the Eagles lost the Superbowl to the Raiders. I still hate Jim Plunkett. In 1993 I went to Toronto and was there when Joe Carter hit the walk-off homer to win the World Series and spoil a magical Phillies season. The first Miami team I really felt passionate about was the Heat. That's because pro b-ball was really new to me. I was rooting for the Marlins in 97 and was happy they won it all but I renounced baseball after the dismantling. Between 2000 and 2002 my appreciation for baseball as a sport increased dramatically. It was always 2nd behind football for me but that changed. When Loria took over the team I decided to give the Marlins a second chance. I decided that baseball might not be around for long so I might as well enjoy it while I could. If the Marlins were going to leave it wasn't going to be because of me. Besides I liked some of the moves Beinfest made. No, I didn't know Dontrelle was going to be our best player but I liked that we unloaded the dead wood contracts of Preston Wilson and Charles Johnson. So I bought season tickets before the 2003 season. Man what fun that was.

Some of the arguments the author makes are ridiculous like the game he mentions with Seabass. We scored one run in that game. Unless our pitchers pitched a shut out we were going to lose regardless of who played SS.

Actually there IS a correlation between winning and attendance and Baseball Prospectus has studied this in depth. The attendence spikes come in the seasons after a playoff appearance (all thing being equal, meaning that you don't a have a PR nightmare like the dismantling of your championship team). The Marlins attendance has increased in each of the last two years after their latest WS win. Perhaps it's not as much as we would like it to be but it has increased. There's a lot of variables involved. Winning is a big one but the stadium (whether it's perception, location, weather or what have you) is another big one. And uncertainty about the team's future has to be a big one too.

People attended in the beginning despite the crappy stadium and crappy location of the stadium. A strike, a dismantling of a championship team, an owner who badmouthed the aforementioned crappy stadium, and an owner that needed to borrow money from MLB to buy the team. All of these things have made it tough to invest emotionally in this team. We all have but we are the fanatics. Average people want to know that the team they root for isn't moving away. Until the stadium deal is settled there will be a dark cloud (literally and figuratively) over the team. Nobody wants to get wet.

Honestly what does the manager of the A's really do? First off it's an AL team so no big pinch hit decisions to make. The A's organization loathes bunting or stealing so that takes some more decision out of the hand of the manager. He fills the line-up card out and takes a couple of walks to the mound. Any of us could do that. I can't even remember the name of the previous guy, you know the one that took them to the playoffs and then went to the Mets from which he disappeared off the face of the earth.

They interviewed Washington, Hatcher, and Gonzalez. All minorities. The rest of my response can be found at http://www.bighugg.org/blatantplugs/info.html As of 6 hrs ago Hatcher was GOING to meet with the Marlins and I hadn't heard that Washington had interviewed for the job, the last I heard that was the speculation but I guess he did since you know it all. Catch the rest at http://www.youareasmartass.com

I doubt that they would offer the job to anyone without interviewing several minority candidates first. They got slammed for that once when they hired McKeon. I think the whole policy is ridiculous. I wrote about it a while back and the article can be found at my blog. http://floridafishfan.blogspot.com/2004/01...t-you-want.html

It's too simplistic to say that people are moving north and therefore the stadium should be north. For one thing Miami-Dade continues to grow (south towards homstead and west towards the glades). Also there's a lot of Dade residents that are moving back east to long forgotten neighborhoods because of the housing crunch. And as I posted before tons of people LIVE in Broward and points north but continue to WORK in Miami-Dade. Since 2/3 of the games are held on weekday evenings I think it's better to be near where people work. That's why all the new ballparks are closer to the commercial centers than the burbs. An additional advantage is that in the evening heavy traffic patterns are moving away from the commercial center allowing an easier commute in. Again I lived in Coconut Creek and worked in Plantation when I was a Heat season ticket holder in the early 90's. As I sped down to the Miami Arena, the traffic in the other direction was a parking lot. I understand that fans in Broward want to have the stadium nearby (but not too close, wouldn't want to lower those property values) but until they come to the table with $200 Million it just ain't gonna happen. I agree that there hasn't been a lot of time for the Marlins to develop a loyal fanbase. Our community of 4 Million is made up largely of transplants that have been here for a wide range of years. I also want to point out that since the Marlins were established there has been a couple of starts and stops. Marlins attendance was pretty high those first 1.5 seasons and then there was the player strike. That kind of took the wind out of the Marlins sales. Then of course the debacle of the 1998 "defending world champions". The stadium situation needs to be resolved one way or another for people to invest emotionally and literally in thise team. My theory is that HWH is going to get Loria to invest his $192 Million (that he committed in rent to the City/County) in Dolphins stadium. There will be some sort of change to the seating (pivoting seats down the lines) and a retractable roof. The roof is something Wayne has been talking about already. The only other thing would be to add some sort of field turf to the infield when the Dolphins play. I don't know why they don't do it now considering that they do it in a small part of the West end zone.

Great point, if the Marlins were in the AL east they'd have a lot higher attendance. But the reality is that it would be for the wrong reasons. At least now we have some people that still like their Yankees but don't necessarily hate the Marlins and might even go and support them a few times a year.

I don't think Loria/Beinfest will ever blow the whole thing up like HWH did in 98. There will be changes every year though. Welcome to the new world of staying competitive in baseball. Your favorite player may not be here next year but that doesn't mean the team is giving up. The days of having the same line-up for 6 or 7 years are over unless you are the NY Yankees. And the attempt to detract from Beinfests past deals was lame. You can't hold deals that never happened against a GM, and you can't say he just got lucky when he comes up with a Dontrelle Willis. How about unloading CJ and Preston and bringing Pierre in even after Hampton refused to come. And that deal would have been even better if Spoony didn't blow out his arm. Like I said that argument against Beinfest is Weak.

1. Admittedly attendance sucks for the Marlins. But as has been pointed out that doesn't mean the team doesn't have fans. TV ratings are higher than ever. As we know the current stadium has its problems and the Marlins give away their product on TV for free. 2. A NY comparison is ridiculous because they have 100 yrs of history and 5 times the population. 3. Notice some of the other markets that were mentioned in the article: Pirates (new stadium), Tigers (new stadium), Reds (new stadium), Rockies (new stadium), Blue Jays (one of the oldest of the new stadiums, still a retractable roof and downtown location). A lot of these places had bad attendance before they got their new parks. 4. Forget a Broward or PBC location. There's no desire in those areas to spend public funds on it. Besides I don't know what planet some of you live on but southbound traffic into Miami-Dade county on weekdays is a lot lighter than northbound traffic. As it is, it takes me an hour to get from myy south beach office to DS. I used to live and work in broward when I had heat season tickets in the early 90's and can tell you it's easier for broward residents to get to dade than for dade residents to get to broward on weekday evenings. All I hear is a bunch of sour grapes from broward residents because they want the stadium 2 minutes from them. (forget the fact that a good proportion of them work in dade). 5. People will come from farther away to attend a Marlins game in the new stadium because a dome is a guarantee of comfort and no rain delays. 6. Comparing the Heat in their down years to the Marlins attendance isn't any good because a. there are less heat fans (see the South Florida Business Journal Survey on Sports fans) b. the price of a basketball game is much higher than baseball.

When I saw the title of this thread, I immediately thought of Scott Pose. And then I thought of Rich "The Secret Weapon" Renteria.

I wish it would happen but it won't

Wow a blast from the past, Orestes Destrade was on Baseball Tonight, tonight. Is this new? How could I have missed him before.

Last season a guy sat next to me. He was from Australia. He grw up playing ball down under and even played semi-pro down there. He was a third baseman. He was living in London at the time and was in the states on business. But he had never been to a MLB ballpark before. I talked with the guy the whole game and he was so jazzed to see the defending world champs play. I explained that the stadium isn't up to snuff and he couldn't believe it. At the end of the night I gave him my World Series Champ Locker room cap. He didn't want to take it, but I told him I had several at home. Man it just feels good to share baseball with others. What a game!

"So much hype for a guy whose job it is not allow between 4 to 12 total bases in 1 inning. Good pitcher. He does the job he's asked to do. Just saying, he is not a key member of the bullpen and certainly not it's MVP. His playing time is too infrequent and rarely at crucial points of the game. " So much hype for a guy whose job it is not allow between 4 to 12 total bases in 1 inning. " The stats below are from baseball prospectus last week. The pitchers listed are the closers or top relievers for each team. WXRL is "Expected wins added over a replacement level pitcher, adjusted for level of opposing hitters." ARP is "Adjusted Runs Prevented from scoring." So the higher the numbers in these stats the better PITCHER TEAM SV WXRL ARP Chad Cordero WAS 43 5.636 23.0 Bob Wickman CLE 36 3.506 10.2 Joe Nathan MIN 35 3.434 11.5 Trevor Hoffman SDN 35 2.974 5.6 Todd Jones FLO 35 4.657 27.0 Mariano Rivera NYA 35 3.301 22.5 Brad Lidge HOU 34 3.342 11.0 Danny Baez TBA 34 3.819 19.8 Jason Isringhausen SLN 34 3.104 13.0 Francisco Rodriguez ANA 34 3.885 10.9 Dustin Hermanson CHA 33 4.178 17.6 Billy Wagner PHI 32 3.489 22.0 Francisco Cordero TEX 31 2.956 9.8 Eddie Guardado SEA 31 3.789 11.1 B.J. Ryan BAL 29 2.014 14.3 Derrick Turnbow MIL 29 4.151 20.2 Braden Looper NYN 28 0.968 3.4 Jose Mesa PIT 27 -0.221 2.3 Brian Fuentes COL 26 5.225 18.0 Miguel Batista TOR 25 1.411 1.9 Ryan Dempster CHN 23 3.242 10.4 Tyler Walker SFN 22 -0.172 -6.0 Yhency Brazoban LAN 21 0.699 -19.3 Huston Street OAK 18 3.360 34.2 Mike MacDougal KCA 17 0.796 7.6 Chris Reitsma ATL 15 1.071 6.3 Keith Foulke BOS 15 -0.953 -3.4 Brandon Lyon ARI 13 1.117 -6.2 Dave Weathers CIN 11 3.432 14.9 Ugueth Urbina DET 9 1.777 7.2 Todd Jones is 2nd in WXRL and 2nd in ARP. Let's not downplay how important Todd Jones has been so far.

I was at tonights game against the phillies and when Jack pinch hit for moeller in the 6th, i thought of the title of this thread. I said "we just run the white flag up the flag pole."

Please save the tired excuses of (1) 1998, (2) those teams are more established, and (3) and attendance growing up 5% each year (whuppty-dam-do). How does that explain Arizona, who is younger than the Marlins, won 1 WS, had a fire sale, lost some 100+ games last year, but have never drawn less than 2.5 million - a figure we've only went over once - in their entire history? Want to guess how much the Marlins would draw today if they went 110+ losses? Well Arizona isn't going to draw 2.5 million this year. They are at 1.8 and are tracking about half a million attendees behind last year. The 98 fire sale was the second setback the Marlins had. The 94 player strike was the first which affected the Marlins and almost every other big league club. The Diamonbacks weren't even around at that time. They didn't have to rebuild off of that. Hey and guess what, the diamondbacks began play in a brand new, downtown, baseball only, retractable roof stadium. Sound familiar? The Marlins play in a suburban, football stadium with crummy sightlines, a constant threat of rain and unbearable heat and humidity. Phoenix is also a a market of 4.538 Million people whereas Miami-Ft. Lauderdale is slightly smaller at 4.243 Million Not exactly a fair comparison.

I was at the Arena today with a buddy who was buying tix for another event. They still had standing room tix (dont' know the price) and upper deck tix for $250. I told my buddy I wouldn't spend $250 on a concert unless they resurrected Frank Sinatra and it would have to be the young Sinatra before his voice went to crap. Actually I thought about it and the only band I would spend that kind of coin on is, a POLICE reunion.

You gave me goosebumps. I remember the first time I took my grandfather to a baseball game. It was one of those moments you remember for the rest of your life. I also took my step-grandfather to his first baseball game since 1956 (Polo Grounds). My wifes grandfather was a hell of a man. His job until he retired was selling trophies. He used to call on the youth centers and high schools and stuff and sell trophies for their sports leagues. In his spare time he was a sports writer for the Spanish language newspapers. He wrote a recap column in the Diario Las Americas where he would give the scores of the baseball and softball games played by the country club teams like the Big Five and The Cuidamar Yacht Club. In Cuba and here in the states he also coached basketball. Basketball was his first love. He was tall by cuban standards 6-1 or 6-2. He was a huge Heat fan and did the same walkman deal with the Heat games listening to the play by play in Spanish. My grandfather on my mom's side stayed in Cuba and I never got to meet him because he died over there. My other grandfather died when I was too young to appreciate him. But I must have gotten my love of baseball from him (although he was a Yankee fan, and I abhor the Yankees). So my wife's grandfather was like the grandfather I never had. I loved his company and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed mine. Here's to Antonio "Bebo" Estrada.

Another thing to keep in mind with regards to Marlins attendance is something that recently read on baseball prospectus, namely that a playoff appearance can result in a windfall of up to $30 Million for a team based on increased interest and attendance. The interesting thing is that they claim a playoff appearance can positively affect a team for up to 10 years. The fact that attendance is slightly higher this year than last year (the year we defended the WS championship) speaks to that momentum building. And this is despit the fact that tickets are more expensive this year than last. The problem with the Marlins is that Huizenga killed all of the momentum created by the 97 WS win. And prior to 97 the Marlins were trying to regain momentum (as were other teams) lost with the 94 work stoppage. In short, the 94 work stoppage and the dismantling of the 97 team both retarded the growth of baseball popularity in SoFla. People attended Marlins games in above average numbers before and they will again if we can finally put the stadium issue to bed. Right now there is a cloud over the franchise because people feel if the new stadium doesn't happen that we lose the club. Although there may be another answer which would be a new deal with Dolphins Stadium. Perhaps H Wayne could sell a portion of the stadium to the Marlins and the revenue from the sale could be used to improve the stadium for both football and baseball. One of the things Huizenga wants to do is put some sort of retractable roof on the stadium. Let's hope.

This story brings two thoughts to mind: 1. Like 20 years ago when twin blade razors first came out Saturday Night Live did one of their commercial spoofs on the "Triple Head Razor", a razor with three blades. The tagline of the commercial was "The Triple Head... because you'll believe anything." 2. You're going to have to take out a 2nd mortgage to buy the cartridges for thise new piece of innovation. The Mach 3 blades are already expensive as hell.

The problem with that poll is that it only allows you to pick one team. Most people like more than one team. But face it, nationally football is more popular than baseball. A lot of people would pick football if they could only have one sport but that's not realistic. A better poll was one conducted in 2002 by the South Florida Business Journal that asked people what teams they considered themselves fan of. "Respondents were asked which teams they follow as loyal fans. They were allowed to name more than one team." "The Miami Dolphins led the pack at 58 percent." "the Marlins were chosen by 50 percent of respondents" This was 2002, Loria's first year when people thought the team wasn't going to compete anytime soon. Well before the World Series win. That tells you how big a following the Marlins have. Read the full South Florida Business Journal article here