The Florida Marlins Will Totally Make Ozzie Guillen Their New Manager, Unless They Don’t, Which They Shouldn’t

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If you’ve been paying attention to the news cycle – and I know you have, because you’re reading an ESPN-affiliated Marlins blog that’s almost impossible to find unless you actively went searching for it, which means you really care to know stuff about the team – then you know the Marlins have resumed talks with the White Sox about possibly making Ozzie Guillen the manager heading into the new stadium. To which I would say…

That’s crazy talk.

A little over a year ago, the fine gentlemen at Marlins Diehards summed it up pretty perfectly in just one paragraph:

Managers in baseball are worth only a few wins (or losses) a year, so why bother with the whole charade? Let Wes Helms take the lineup card to the home plate umpire before every game, and pitching coach Randy St. Clair can handle pitching changes. Whoever the new bench coach is can take care of pinch hitters and defensive substitutions, and just like that, the Marlins have cut $650,000 (Fredi Gonzalez’ salary) from their payroll (Mr. Loria can send me a ten percent commission for the savings).

While Wes Helms is no longer around to handle lineup card duties, I’m fairly certain Greg Dobbs can handle the task with relative ease. As for the rest of it, yes. Just, yes.

Besides the fact that Ozzie Guillen can’t win games if Josh Johnson is hurt and Hanley Ramirez is slumping, he’s probably not going to come here for the kind of money the Marlins generally like to spend on a manager. We’re talking about an organization that decided it couldn’t afford players – PLAYERS!!! – as valuable as Miguel Cabrera or Josh Beckett. Those are guys who actually take the field and contribute to winning ballgames. We’re really supposed to expect them to overspend on a guy whose job basically boils down to sitting in the dugout, offering quality soundbites, and occasionally pulling a double switch?

I’m not buying. And there’s zero chance the Marlins are, either.

In talking to the White Sox, the Marlins are simply being that guy in Best Buy who makes the sales manager tell him everything there is to know about the $14,000 TV and surround sound system, even though he has absolutely no intentions of leaving the store with anything other than some batteries and a $5 DVD. (That’s totally me, by the way.)

Seriously, just stop the charade and bring Jack back. Or at the very least, hire a blogger. We come fairly cheap.