contract

18 wins on the season ... and 8 have come vs the Mets. It's too bad we can't play them every day.

The Mets are our bitch. Thank god for the Mets!

Skip the Minors and slot him at third tomorrow night. Damn it ... I wanted to say that!

Several people here were adamantly saying that the 2013 team would surprise people like the 2006 team did. Does anybody want to reconsider that position? I stand firm in my beliefs. I know I'm surprised. I certainly never expected this much suck.

"Why is everyone so down on this team?" What is everyone talking about? 23,199 fans showed up for last night's game despite the Heat being in town for Game 5 of the too close for comfort Eastern Conference Finals. That doesn't sound like everyone is down on this team. It sounds like we're drawing more fans the more we lose. Loria must be some kind of genius. 10k drove down from Tampa. Another 5k thought they had scored 2 dollar Heat tickets. The only way the Rays could get 10,000 baseball fans to drive down to Miami is if the game was in Tampa.

Why in gods name do any of these people have a job, much less have a job with us. They work cheap?

"Why is everyone so down on this team?" What is everyone talking about? 23,199 fans showed up for last night's game despite the Heat being in town for Game 5 of the too close for comfort Eastern Conference Finals. That doesn't sound like everyone is down on this team. It sounds like we're drawing more fans the more we lose. Loria must be some kind of genius.

I have been reading on the site for a while and i have never seen so much negativity as i see recently these days. I know that our record is not very good right now but there is alot to look forward to on this team and i don't know how there is so much negativity in a place where we have all been here before in the same situation. remember how in 2002 we were bad? what happened in 2003? remember when we had the team in 2005 that was underperformed and beinfest cleaned the roster up? what happened in 2006? i know it has been tough for the marlins and for us fans but i have confidence in this front office that has rebuilt this team so many times with good trades and stealing unknown players from other systems and watching them explode in to stars before our eyes. im so passionate about this team and i know alot about the game and i know that this team will contend sooner than alot of you think. it seems like its the popular thing to hate the marlins these days around town but as the real fans maybe we should take a step back and we can see that things are not bad at all. we do have the worst record in mlb right now but we also have so many injuries that have hurt the offense and our pitching. the young guys are playing great and the veterans are going to start to hit like they always have soon. we are missing our two best hitters with Solano and Stanton and our second and third best pitchers with Eovaldi and Alverez. id there a team in the mlb that can have that happen to them and not be with the record we have? i think if the team hangs in there until the all stars break and stanton and solano and eovaldi and alverez come back we can make a run towards .500 and things will look great going in to next year when we have christian yelich added to the team and also logan morrison. some of you have forgotten a little bit about what beinfest has done for this team in the past. i trust him and maybe some of you disagree and like to look at sabermetrics more but i for one trust the eyes alot more when i evaluate a player and im glad that this front office does the same mostly because it has brought some great and exciting players to this team. we always rebuild and it will be no different this time. GO FISH!!!!!! Passion is great and optimism is fine, but I don't care if we add Babe Ruth to our lineup, this team isn't getting anywhere near .500 Maybe next year.

Yawn. God could own this team and paid attendance (and actual turnstile clicks) would suck. 100 mill of payroll in a brand new stadium didn't do it last year -- there's no reason to expect that any level of payroll will be any different in any other year in the foreseeable future. Maybe 20 or 30 years from now after a fan base has been slowly built. If you cheat on your wife, don't expect everything to be fine just because you buy her some jewelry. Relationships aren't that easy. Lots of relationships say "sup." Worthwhile relationships.

Yawn. God could own this team and paid attendance (and actual turnstile clicks) would suck. 100 mill of payroll in a brand new stadium didn't do it last year -- there's no reason to expect that any level of payroll will be any different in any other year in the foreseeable future. Maybe 20 or 30 years from now after a fan base has been slowly built. If you cheat on your wife, don't expect everything to be fine just because you buy her some jewelry. Relationships aren't that easy.

Given Loria's widespread incompetence, anyone else starting to suspect that the prized piece in Loria's art collection is a picture of some dogs playing poker? No ... but that was damn funny.

Yes, the Miami market is difficult, but I believe that if this team actually made a consistent effort to win (through actually spending revenue sharing money on payroll, among other things), and they had some patience, eventually this can work out. But the only consistent thing throughout the 20 years this team has existed is that nothing stays the same for long. I mean you win a WS in 1997, but within a month blow it up. Before that was the '94 strike, which wasn't the team's fault, but that hurt baseball attendance for a long time. Then Huizenga sold, then Henry sold. They won the WS again, but within less than 3 years that team was blown up. Since then popular players are rarely around for more than a couple of years, which isn't going to drive fan interest. Overall there's been virtually no continuity in the team's existence. If one of the owners had actually been committed to the team and city, and not just trying to get a stadium as their main goal, I think things would have been different. I've made that point before. People can say "root for the uniform, not the players" but that not realistic. You have to give fans a chance to identify with at least some of the guys on the roster. This team needs some guys that can play and stick around for the long haul.

I know two long time season ticket holders who have gotten so angry with Loria that they didn't renew their tickets and will not even watch a game until he sells. Some people really do mean it when they say they will boycott the Marlins until Loria is gone. And that means no tickets, no watching the games on TV, and not buying Marlins gear. I even see it at the cigar shop I hang out at. For the past few years the Marlins games would be on TV and there would be 6 or 7 people watching the games. They would always be there no matter how bad the Marlins were. This year it's just me and maybe one other, and the rest have told me they won't watch until Loria sells. Loria is killing the brand. The longer he keeps the team, the more damage he'll do to the Marlins brand. I agree. IMO Loria cost himself a significant amount of money by not selling the team before this latest "fire sale". As you can see, it's gotten to the point where it doesn't even matter if the players they trade away are any good or not. Fans see salary being dumped, and that signals to them that the organization simply doesn't care about winning.

How about just giving the few fans in the upper deck the option to move to "better" seats in the lower deck if they prefer? So they should staff the upper deck in case a few fans would prefer to turn down the upgrade? Like I said, simply offer to move those fans to better seats if they prefer. Unless they are offering garbage seats, you have to assume that > 90% of those ticket holders will gladly accept the upgrade. Maybe they all accept the offer and there is then no issue and nothing for anyone to complain about.

I sat upper deck there and I sat lower deck there. Sure, you have a section to yourself up there but the view of the game can't be compared. My personal opinion anyway. It just seems to be another way for some fans to complain about anything the Marlins do. They could hand out $100 bills at the entrance and someone would complain about that somehow. How about just giving the few fans in the upper deck the option to move to "better" seats in the lower deck if they prefer?

What if these fans prefer to sit in the upper deck? What if they paid their hard earned money for the privilege of having an entire section all to themselves? What if they don't like the new seats? Too bad. If people get angry about getting a free upgrade, that's their problem. It's only an "upgrade" if the supposed beneficiary agrees that it is. Otherwise it's just a forced relocation. This has nothing to do with improving the fan experience. It's about cutting cost.

Ya gotta love the Herald's agenda: Business bad. Marlins bad. Bad, bad, bad. :lol I think it's pretty well established that the Marlins are bad. Bad, bad, bad.

They never are, they're only interested in their own power. After all, in their own minds they know best -- they're obviously smarter than everyone else, and certainly smarter than any private business or bunch of individuals like, say, the Marlins. Obviously the Marlins are smarter ... since they conned the county into spending $2.4 billion to build them a new stadium because the sun and the rain were keeping fans away from their games.

What if these fans prefer to sit in the upper deck? What if they paid their hard earned money for the privilege of having an entire section all to themselves? What if they don't like the new seats?

That'll teach him to hit the ball over the fence!

Holy crap! Runs! And lot of them!

We did wonders for Halladay's ERA today. He went from an ERA of 14.97 to an ERA of 7.63. It may indeed be May before a Marlins player hits a home run at Marlins Ballpark. 9 more home games before May. No way we go that long without a HR.

"Free Season Tickets Night" might actually draw a few fans.

I didn't have a problem with the Carlos Lee deal. At least he was trying to win last year. This year is going to be horrible. It was silly. Trading the only decent 3B prospect for an old, declining 1B and then trading your starting 3B later that month? We already play a 1B in left field, Lee added nothing to the team. The team was poorly constructed and they threw bad contracts at players. It's a lack of vision by this team. They tried to win and it didn't work. I'll tell you where they had a lack of vision....when they sent Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante to the Tigers for another bag of crap.....just like they did when the Marlins sent Miguel Cabrera to them. I would never deal with the Tigers again! It's their fault that we suck?

Playing in arguably the best division in baseball also doesn't help our cause for trying to win games. The way this team hits I don't see who we beat in the entire NL in a 3 game series. Maybe Colorado if their pitching sucks. Other teams will have slumps. We just have to catch some teams when they are down ... and try to not be the cure for what ails them.