Archive for Marlins News
Miami Marlins select OF Alfredo Silverio, LHP Braulio Lara in Rule 5 draft
Posted by: | CommentsThe Rule 5 Draft took place on Thursday morning, and with the Marlins bargain shopping for players, they were expected to be active during the draft. Marlins fans remember the Rule 5 Draft from 2006, in which the Marlins landed all-star second baseman Dan Uggla. The Marlins have not had much success in the draft since.
Rule 5 players, obtained for $50,000 each, must open the season on a team’s 25-man roster or be returned to their original club. But Miami hopes both players can stick and produce.
On Thursday, the Marlins selected three players in the Rule 5 Draft. The team selected two players in the MLB Phase of the draft, outfielder Alfredo Silverio from the Los Angeles Dodgers and pitcher Braulio Lara from the Tampa Bay Rays. The team selected Tyler Kehrer from the Los Angeles Angels in the Triple-A phase.
Alfredo Silverio is the most intriguing pick for the Marlins. Silverio had a breakout season in 2011 for the Dodgers Double-A team, posting an impressive .306/.340/.542 line with an impressive .382 wOBA. Silverio also scored 90 runs and collected 42 doubles, 18 triples, 16 home runs and 85 RBI in 132 games with double-A Chattanooga in 2011, earning Southern League All-Star honors.
On Jan. 23 of this year, he was involved in a one-car accident in the Dominican Republic. Silverio in the accident suffered injuries to his back, shoulder, elbow, and neck. He was reportedly suffering from concussion-like symptoms six weeks after the car crash.
“The Dodgers just showed me pictures of the car. He’s lucky he’s alive,’’ said Marty Scott, the Marlins’ vice president for player development.
The good news for the Marlins, Silverio was recently taking batting practice in the Domincan Republic. Hopefully that is a positive sign for his career going forward. Silverio has not been cleared to throw the ball, as of yet, as a result of his Tommy John Surgery.
“If we get him healthy as quickly as we can, not rush him, he’s a possible DL guy to start the year,” Scott said.
“He’s a project and you bring him in but tool-wise and the grades we had on him and the fact that he has recovered from the concussions and the Tommy John, it’s very promising.’’
This is what Baseball America had to say about the Marlins pick:
Showed the potential for five average or better tools, but missed all of 2012 after a car accident resulted in a concussion and an elbow injury. If healthy, could be the safest bet to stick on big league roster.
Silverio will likely start the season on the disabled list, but will have to be active for at least 90 days for the Marlins, or they will have to return him to the Dodgers.
The Marlins also selected Braulio Lara from the Tampa Bay Rays. Lara is an intriguing prospect, as he is a left-hander with plenty of zip on his fastball. He has however struggled with command in the minor leagues. Last season, Lara, 23, was 6-10 with a 5.71 ERA (112.0 IP/71 ER) in 25 games, including 21 starts, with single-A Charlotte in the Tampa Bay Rays system. Lara has a career 4.41 ERA in his minor league career.
This is what Baseball America had to say about the Marlins pick:
Lara has a lean, athletic build that produces a mid-90s fastball and a hard, downer curveball. He went 6-10, 5.71 in high Class A in 2012 so while the stuff is excellent, he’s a long ways from being ready to help a big league club.
Lara is a solid pick, but he is a less likely candidate to stick with the Marlins. He has never pitched above High-A and it would be a stretch to see him succeeding in the Majors, but with the Marlins likely to be out of contention early, Lara will have a chance to make it work with the Marlins.
In the minor league phase, the Marlins selected left handed pitcher, Tyler Kehrer from the Angels Double-A team. I do not know as much about Kehrer as the other prospects, but his raw numbers in the minors do not look too good, as he walks way too many hitters.
Miami Marlins Staff Still Lacking Bench Coach
Posted by: | CommentsEditor’s note: As I mentioned in the site update earlier today, we are debuting a new writer on Marlins Daily. The new writer is David Polakoff. If the name sounds familiar, David runs the best Marlins forum on the internet, SoFlaMarlins. You can follow David on Twitter here.
After hiring Tino Martinez as their hitting coach last week, the Marlins’ on field staff is beginning to take shape. New manager Mike Redmond will have fielding guru Perry Hill back as the first base coach, with Joe Espada returning as the third base coach. Reid Cornelius, the former Marlins hurler who has been the team’s bullpen coach for the past few seasons, will be returning to the staff in some capacity, either as the pitching coach or bullpen coach. With the exception of Perry Hill, all of these coaches have one thing in common: relative inexperience.
Hill, of course, has been with the Marlins on multiple tours of duty and has been coaching for some time. Beyond Hill, Reid Cornelius and Joe Espada are the two most experienced coaches on the staff, with both having been minor league coaches until their promotions for the 2010 season. Martinez is a first year coach, whose prior experience includes Spring Training special instructor and YES Network color commentator, and Redmond has two years of managerial experience in A-ball under his belt. The bench coach position is an important hire for the Marlins, and they would be wise to go with an experienced hand in the position.
Recently it was reported that Redmond had mentioned Don Wakamatsu as a possibility. Wakamatsu is a former big league manager and is currently the bench coach for Toronto. Joe Frisaro recently noted Ron Hassey as a name that could merit consideration. Hassey is currently the Marlins’ AAA manager and was a big league coach in the mid-1990s as well as the Mariners’ bench coach from 2005-2006.
Beyond those names, however, the others that have been surfacing are more inexperienced names. In the same article, Frisaro mentions Mike Mordecai, Andy Fox, and Dave Berg. Mordecai managed for a year in the minors with the Marlins organization before going to coach high school baseball. Berg is currently a manager in the Marlins’ system. Fox, the most experienced of the group, was a Marlins first base coach from 2007-2009, but the team fired him after the season. A final name that has come up is Mike Lowell; MLB Network Radio noted that Redmond and Lowell made an agreement to name each other bench coaches if and when one of them became a manager.
With such an inexperienced staff, the Marlins would do well to find an experienced coach to sit alongside Mike Redmond in 2013. There are plenty of former managers – Jerry Manuel, Larry Bowa, Willie Randolph, Jerry Narron – who would likely appreciate an opportunity to rebuild their reputation and take the reigns as bench coach. Given the overwhelming youth of the coaches, this team could use a baseball lifer on the bench.
Marlins Call Up Rob Brantly
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Just three weeks after being acquired in the Anibal Sanchez/Omar Infante deal, the Marlins have called up 23-year-old catcher Rob Brantly from AAA New Orleans.
The move was announced following Sunday’s 5-0 loss to the Dodgers, with backup catcher Brett Hayes being sent down to clear a roster spot. It seems that with the roster moves made over the past month, August and September will now serve as the prime audition opportunity for players whom the club will decide to make part of the long term future of the organization.
Since coming over from Detroit, Brantly had been raking for the Zephyrs, posting a .365/.389/.558 line with two home runs and 11 RBI. Although he’s drawn just one walk in 52 at-bats as a member of the Marlins organization, Brantly is at least able to keep his strikeout totals low.
In their statement regarding Brantly’s call up, Marlins president Larry Beinfest said that “I don’t think you want to bring him up and have him sit. You want to look for some advantageous situations for him, but he needs to play.” Obviously, bringing up Brantly means that he’ll get a chance for plenty of at-bats, and with the atrocious season that John Buck has had, it won’t take much for Brantly to be an improvement over the current catching situation. In fact, the Marlins have posted the second-lowest fWAR total in the NL from the catcher position at just 0.3 WAR, ahead of only the Cubs.
Beinfest also mentioned that while they would still like to see Brantly improve defensively, they see no problem in evaluating his receiving skills at the big league level rather than doing so in Triple-A. Brantly has always been viewed as an offensive-minded catcher with more line-drive ability than power, but it will be worth watching how well he can hold up behind the dish. Despite the struggles of Buck with the bat, he has still been able to throw out 32% of runners attempting to steal. Brantly did show good arm strength during this year’s Futures Game, throwing out Cardinals’ OF prospect Oscar Taveras, but the big leagues will obviously require a bigger adjustment compared to a minor league All-Star game.
Brantly will get the next two months to show the Marlins whether where he fits in with their future plans, and if all goes well, he’ll have secured himself a spot as the everyday catcher for the forseeable future.
Additional thoughts on the Marlins-Dodgers trade.
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Just as I was about to shut my laptop and get some sleep for the evening, a tweet from Jon Morosi caught my eye that contained the words “BREAKING,” “Hanley,” and “Dodgers.” After realizing that you can literally catch anyone’s attention by starting your tweets with “breaking” in all caps, the Twitterverse learned that the Marlins had sent 3B Hanley Ramirez and reliever Randy Choate to the Los Angeles Dodgers for right-handed pitchers Nate Eovaldi and Scott McGough.
Unsurprisingly, the news elicited quite the broad range of reactions on Twitter, although it has calmed down quite a bit now that we’ve learned more specific details of the trade.
I’ll get to talking about the newest Marlins, Nate Eovaldi and Scott McGough, in a second, but first let’s take a look at the biggest motivator in this deal from Miami’s perspective: money. The Dodgers will be taking on all of HanRam’s remaining salary (about $40 million over the next two seasons), which means that the Marlins have already cleared nearly $20 million off their payroll in the past week alone.
It’s possible that the Fish had the opportunity to get better players in return for Ramirez, but in all likelihood, having the option to erase him off their payroll for good was a much stronger incentive and when the Dodgers offered to pick up the tab, they pulled the trigger as fast as they could. For a guy that has posted a line of .246/.322/.430 this season, it isn’t as if his trade value was at an all-time high by any stretch of the imagination. What’s probably most fascinating is that the Marlins spent over $300 million in free agency last winter alone, yet they may have just begun the fastest turnaround to offload money that we’ve ever seen.
Marlins trade Hanley Ramirez to Dodgers for Nate Eovaldi and Scott McGough
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The Marlins have dealt Hanley Ramirez and Randy Choate to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for Nate Eovaldi and “Scott McGough,” says our good friend over at FOX Sports, Jon Paul Morosi. The Dodgers will be paying all of the $31.5 million that Ramirez is owed over the next two years.
There indeed have been more than a few rumors of a potential Ramirez deal over the past few days, and well, that looks to have finally come to fruition. Ramirez has been a disaster over the past couple of seasons and his value has dropped as low as it probably ever has in his career, which is why I’m surprised that the deal took place now instead of, well, when and if his value ever grew. We knew that after the Marlins dealt Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante away at the beginning of the week that a few more trades could happen, but a Hanley deal was not one that I was truly expecting.
The Marlins seemed to have made a commitment to winning this past off-season when they signed Heath Bell, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes for almost $300 million, so this rebuilding phase that’s currently taking place makes some of those signings appear to be even more of a question mark. I suppose the hope, however, is that Jacob Turner and Eovaldi can help man a rotation that can — as the Marlins sure expect — compete for next year’s division crown.
The Marlins’ system has significantly improved since they drafted Christian Yelich and Jose Fernandez, as the two have easily slotted themselves among baseball’s best prospects, but the additions of Rob Brantly, Turner and now the aforementioned Eovaldi (even though he isn’t a prospect) make the young core on this team much more impressive a few years down.
It Has Begun
Posted by: | CommentsIt is about time we saw some action from the Marlins this season. Too bad that action was not on the field. Yesterday, the Marlins, who spent a small fortune during the off-season in order to be contenders this year, sent Omar Infante and Anibal Sanchez to the Detroit Tigers for, well, let’s face it, Jacob Turner.
Oh yeah, as Dave mentioned here, this trade was historically significant because it marks the first time teams have traded their compensation picks. According to Peter Gammons, The Marlins obtain prospects Rob Brantly and Brian Flynn along with Turner. The Tigers will also now have the last pick in compensation round A (after the first round), while the Marlins will have the final pick in compensation round B (after the second round).
Breaking News: Miami Marlins sign No. 9 pick Andrew Heaney for $2.6 million
Posted by: | CommentsApparently all those rumors yesterday that the Miami Marlins and their top pick Andrew Heaney were done negotiating were false, as the two sides has come to terms on an agreement, for the $2.6 million the Marlins were offering.
I guess all the criticism that the Marlins met yesterday for being dumb and cheap for taking a hardball stance need to be renounced. But as you know with Marlins fans and baseball fans in general, people only remember the bad the Marlins front office does.
Jim Callis of Baseball America reports that they’ve agreed to a $2.6 million bonus. The left hander out of Oklahoma State will be a quick riser in the Marlins minor league system and should be ready to be a full-time starter sometime in 2014. Heaney projects as a 3/4 rotation pitcher. Heaney never had any leverage in the negotiations and probably realized that any injury or struggle he faced in 2012 without an MLB contract would hurt the amount of money he could potentially get next season.
The Marlins hardball stance, which saved them $200,000, will help them get their third round pick, Avery Romero. Romero, was committed to the University of Florida, but Joe Frisaro expects the two sides to agree to a bonus of at least $700,000.
Miami Marlins fail to come to terms with first-round pick Heaney
Posted by: | CommentsThe deadline for draft picks to sign is not until 5 PM EST Friday, but the Miami Marlins and Andrew Heaney are apparently done negotiating. Jim Callis of Baseball America first reported the news on his Twitter account and Juan Rodriguez, of the Sun-Sentinel, confirmed the news.
According to Rodriguez, the Marlins offered Andrew Heaney $2.6 million, he was seeking the slot amount for the ninth pick, at $2.8 million. The Marlins still have time to negotiate and work out a deal, but it does not seem likely at this point. As Rodriguez pointed out, per Marlins team policy, the require a physical and full bloodwork before consummating a deal. The likelihood of that getting done before Friday are slim.
The Marlins selected Andrew Heaney with the ninth overall pick out of Oklahoma State. If the team fails to sign Heaney, the Marlins will have the 10th pick in the 2012 draft.
Losing a pitcher like Heaney, who was ranked as the best college left hander in the draft, is not a good thing to happen for a Marlins team that has already one of the worst minor league talent in baseball.
As for Heaney, he can return to Oklahoma State for his senior year. Heaney can also go for a stint in Independent Baseball.
A big break for a special player
Posted by: | CommentsBrian Moynahan, MiLB.com, Bus Leagues Baseball & occasional Marlins Daily contributor stopped by to contribute a heartwarming story to the site. Below is all courtesy of Brian.
Landon Camp never saw his big break coming.
He was waiting in line for a burger last January when he checked his phone and saw that he had a missed call and a message from Doc Edwards, his manager for the past three seasons with the San Angelo Colts of the independent North American League. The message referenced “contract stuff” that the two needed to discuss; naturally, Camp’s first hopeful thought was that he was getting a raise.
When he called Edwards back, the 75-year-old former major league player, manager, and coach launched into a “long, drawn-out story” that soon had his third baseman wondering what exactly the reason had been for the original call.
“Come on, Doc, tell me what’s going on here,” Camp thought.
Finally, Edwards got to the point: he wasn’t calling about a raise. He was calling to tell Camp that his contract had been sold to the Miami Marlins. Camp, an un-drafted free agent out of Oklahoma City University who in three seasons as an independent player had never before drawn the interest of an affiliated organization, was predictably stunned.
“I just sat there in line for like five minutes because I couldn’t believe it was going on,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the people behind me were mad but I didn’t really care at that point. Just hang out back there and let me enjoy my spot for a minute.
“Something like that is like a dream come true for me, to spend three years in independent ball and finally got my shot! I was so excited.”
The moment was made all the more special by the fact that Camp almost didn’t become a professional baseball player. Coming off a four-year career at OCU in which he set a school record with 65 homeruns, he told himself that if he wasn’t drafted, that was it; he would take his degree, find a job, and go to work.
