Over at the Sun Sentinel Blog, our good friend Juan Rodriguez toured the ballpark for the final time and took some pretty neat pictures. All of the photos below are courtesy of Rodriguez.

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According to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports, the Marlins have inked yet another big name — this time, Mark Buehrle. As of right now, it’s a four-year deal worth $58 million, an average of $14+ a year. We don’t know for sure, but this presumably ends the Albert Pujols-to-Miami talk given the fact that the Marlins, like all teams, do have a budget and have already spent nearly $200 million this off-season. That said, Jon Heyman recently tweeted that even after signing Buehrle, the Marlins still plan on targeting C.J. Wilson and even Prince Fielder.

Buehrle, a left-hander, has earned the White Sox 3+ wins each of the past five years. I’m not sure whether or not it’s fair to say that the Marlins signed Buehrle to a “team-friendly deal,” but he’s a reliable left-handed starter who has managed to stay healthy basically throughout his entire career and post decent peripherals. In 2011, Buerhle rocked a 3.98 FIP while walking just under two batters per nine innings. Assuming the dimensions in Marlins Ballpark are as large as advertised, Buerhle should have even more success for the Fish than he did in previous years with the Sox.

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After months of speculation and internet leaks and rumors and denials and other such nonsense, the Miami Marlins logo is set to unveil…

But, not until November 11, so, hey, there’s still time for one more set of leaked photos before the official release date! Which is good, because George Richards, who covers the Florida Panthers for The Miami Herald, spotted (and purchased!) that hat you see above in a store with a name that, according to Richards, “rhymes with ‘New Terra.’” (Modell’s?)

Word is, this may not be the finished product — the Marlins won’t unveil any of this stuff until Nov. 11 when the transition to Miami becomes official. 

Could be the Marlins will have numerous hats; one is said to have the Montreal ‘M’ minus all the colors and the Dolphins Stadium fish. 

Which is how, I suppose, David Samson can deny that the logo that originally leaked is the new logo of the Miami Marlins. Because there might be some variations, which would technically make Samson not the biggest liar in the world, although it certainly wouldn’t help his Marlins Daily Weasel Rating™, which, at the moment, is a lofty 92.7 out of 100.

The hat certainly looks official, though, unless some New Era employee is going to great lengths to troll a fan base that’s generally pretty apathetic in regards to its Major League Baseball franchise. But, hey, just in case you’re someone who does care, and you feel like that logo might be growing on you now that you’ve seen it on a real life product, there’s this:

Also heard the Marlins new uniforms are, to be nice, quite hideous. 

Shocking, I know. 

Could there be an all orange uniform for the Fish?

No, George, there’s nothing shocking about the team with the futuristic logo and gaudy home run contraption making another stupid decision in regards to jersey color. This is what we’ve come to expect. Maybe this organization knows how to evaluate talent (and I cannot emphasize that “maybe” enough), but when it comes to design, the billionaire art dealer keeps showing himself to be a typical billionaire art dealer, someone whose artistic sensibilities are tied directly to a price tag and the probability of someone noticing that particular piece of artwork. It’s sort of amazing that Jeffrey Loria doesn’t walk around the new Marlins ballpark with the Mona Lisa hanging from a 24k gold chain around his neck, while a neon arrow flashes from a sign above his head that reads, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”

I’m actually surprised that the new logo isn’t more in-your-face.

But, what I think doesn’t matter. On November 11, 2011, the Miami Marlins will unveil something we’ve already seen – and maybe some things we won’t ever want to see again – and that will be that. We’ll have time to complain, but ultimately, what’s done will have been done. And when the season starts, much like the billionaire art dealer, our opinions of the artwork will be directly related to something, as well…

Winning. The cost of a corn dog.

In news that almost seems made up, but is in no way surprising with this team, the Florida Marlins will soon become the Miami Marlins, but their website won’t, because it belongs to some fisherman and the team doesn’t plan on buying the domain name from him. You got all that? Here, let me break it down for you…

Way back when the Marlins were winning their first World Series, some guy named Guido Blanco – which, to my surprise, wasn’t already the name of a Jersey Shore character – purchased a domain name for a charter-fishing company he planned on running. That domain? MiamiMarlins.com. Fourteen years later, Guido’s charter-fishing dreams may’ve never come to fruition, but he still holds on to that domain name. A domain name that leads you to this page.

And why is all of this important? Take it away, Matt Brooks:

According to MLB.com spokesman Matthew Gould, the league and the Marlins have no plans to acquire the site from Blanco, which would make them the only team in the league not to own the rights to its team name domain.

Because Guido Blanco is a terrorist, obviously, and the Miami Marlins do not negotiate with terrorists. Sorry, Guido. Them’s the rules.

We’ll continue to update you on this ongoing saga…

[The Early Lead]

Is this abomination the new logo for your 2012 Miami Marlins? Ted Hill of Marlins Die Hards stumbled across this last night, multiple unnamed sources began confirming it, blogs ran with it and, well, now here we are, staring at this godawful thing and wondering how we’ve arrived at this point. (It should be noted that according to at least one person on the site where this originated, the font on top might just be for t-shirts and probably isn’t the Marlins ripping off the Giants.)

But, maybe that’s just my artistic background judging too harshly. What say you, Marlins fans? What do you think of the logo that may or may not be sitting on Mike Stanton’s cap next year? Like it? Love it? Kill it with fire?

Let your voice be heard in the comments section down below…

Sometimes, even when stupid people say stupid things, those stupid thing get trumped by someone else saying something even stupider. Take yesterday, for example, when Jack McKeon, David Samson and Dan Le Batard all combined to have the stupidest conversation known to man.

Each week, Samson joins Dan on his radio show to chat about baseball, movies and other various things that make David Samson sound especially creepy. Yesterday, during the interview, Dan read McKeon’s comments about Ricky Nolasco aloud. Comments Samson apparently hadn’t heard yet.

“I guess that’s why you’re 10-11 or 11-10 or whatever,” McKeons said of Nolasco, who fell to 10-11 with Wednesday’s loss. “That’s why you’re not a 20-game winner. You’ve got to concentrate. You’ve got to make pitches. Sooner or later, you’re in the big leagues four or five years, you got to be better than that.”

“You can’t let .220 hitters take care of you all the time,” said McKeon, referring to Gonzalez, a .238 hitter. “With two strikes with Gonzo, throw the ball a foot outside or a foot over his head and he’ll swing at it. He was going to trick him, I guess. You throw him that soft stuff and he’s going to hit it, but we keep giving it to him.”

What happened next was as puzzling as McKeon’s commets were stupid. (I don’t have the exact exchange handy, but as soon as the podcast goes up, I’ll link it for you.) After reading the comments and asking for his thoughts, Samson angrily said something along the lines of, “Well, that’s not going to help his trade value any.” And then went into full-on damage control mode, spinning the comments and saying all of the right things, as if this were something that needed spinning.

How many GMs were sitting by their radio, putting the finishing touches on a deal for Ricky Nolasco, only to hear a 400-year-old manager who nobody takes seriously, say exactly what the season’s box scores already say about Nolasco, and think to himself, “WAIT! WHAT AM I DOING?!?”

This whole thing was a non-issue. Were Jack’s comments dumb? Obviously. When aren’t his comments dumb? But, what exactly do you expect from Jack McKeon? This is what he’s been doing all season. It isn’t like he mentioned an undisclosed injury or hinted that Nolasco is a nightmare for pitching coaches to work with. He said that sometimes Ricky’s pretty bad. This isn’t top-secret information and I’m pretty sure David Samson knows that McKeon’s outburst should have zero impact on potential trades this offseason. If he doesn’t, then the organization has bigger problems than an old man with a broken filter.

The person I’m most disappointed in, though, is Le Batard. Dan would never be considered a dumb person, and this is usually the kind of thought process where his brilliance shines through… So why wasn’t he able to sniff out something so obvious? Why didn’t he point out how benign McKeon’s comments actually were? Why would he even bring up something so meaningless in the first place, when his show purports to be above typical sports talk radio sensationalism?

Jack saying what he said was idiotic at best, since nothing good can come of it, but the reactions of both David Samson and Dan Le Batard were equally as stupid. Of course, if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Florida Marlins organization this year, it’s that they seem to do an exceptional job of manufacturing in-house controversy.

At least they’re good at something, I suppose.