Marlins Trade summary

I always thought the reason we weren't scoring as much was because the top guys in the order weren't getting on base enough, and we were waiting on the big inning. We agree that the SSDD lineup was not working. If Choi had been batted higher when he was here we would have scored more runs. His best asset offensively was his ability to get on base, and he wasted wasted in the 5th or 6th spot.

Note: We shouldn't rely on RISP numbers considering our team leader in RBIs (Cabrera) is batting worse than Choi and anyone not named Conine.

You are right that the catcher has a good deal of influence on the rest of the team. They work with the pitchers and are the field captain. But look at Willingham and Treanor. These are two talented guys who were thrown into the mix in the middle of the season. Our starting pitching has declined since we've had to rely on them to call pitches. Teams wanted to test their arms to see what they had, and our pitchers' slow deliveries never gave them a chance. I hope this deal works out, but I can not remember once in the past decade where a catcher, joined a new team midseason and performed well defensively and worked well with a pitching staff. There's just too many things for a new catcher to overcome no matter if he's a veteran or a rookie.

Offensively the catcher's position is a wash. Once you get past the top five in the league there's not much difference between #6 and #36. LoDuca's not a top five catcher offensively and closer to #10 than #6. Even if LoDuca can keep up his first half numbers his value over Redmond/Treanor/Willingham is very little compared to what we lost in Encarnacion replacing Choi.

I've beat the Choi thing to death, but one thing that I really didn't like about our moves is that we gave up too much for a relief help.

Our bullpen was not horrible. No one felt safe when someone other than Mando came in, but you know what? Every fan of every team in the world is frustrated in their bullpen! They don't realize no team has Benitez, Gagne, Nen, Rivera, Foulke and Guardado in the same pen. They all have AAAA players, rookies serving their time and struggling veterans. We ranked in the middle of the league in blown saves. The bullpen had cost us only 4 games when we lead after the seventh inning.

Mota is dynamite and Seanez is decent, but at most they'll each give us 30 innings tops. Penny had 12 or 13 games left in him down the stretch run before we could have traded him off this winter for the next Choi or Bill Murphy. I don't feel comfortable with Valdes out there when considering Beckett's blisters and Willis' inconsistency he may have to be counted on to be our third starter.

We all know what happened after 1997 and didn't like it, and despite some of our spirited defenses we felt some of those same feelings this offseason when we let Pudge, Lee and others leave.

Just because Beinfest added a name to the team didn't make it a good addition. Just because Beinfest added on older players, bad contracts and doesn't make this a good trade. We're still a small revenue team. We're still in a desperate financial position. Let's not fool ourselves that we aren't because we took on payroll in this deal. This offseason Beinfest made moves to help the team on the field and in the bank book, and this July he placed us back into the position of probably starting 4-5 rookies in key roles next year.

I'm tired of discussing this trade. I'm a Marlins fan and hope we and I apologize to all of you for being an ass. I just think our chances to win this year and years into the future were damaged. I hope Enc, Beinfest, etc. prove me wrong.