Derek Jeter helped build a new culture with the Marlins’ rebuild. It’s showing in 2020
While the Miami Marlins were celebrating at Yankee Stadium on Friday, basking in the glory of clinching their first playoff appearance in 17 years, CEO Derek Jeter began making a round of phone calls. He wanted to personally thank the dozens and dozens of people who made this possible.
Once the team’s celebration in New York started to subside, Jeter reached out to Don Mattingly, the manager of his club who navigated the Marlins through hurdle after hurdle during this 60-game, pandemic-shortened season. A COVID-19 outbreak, 18 MLB debuts, 61 total players, nearly 175 roster moves and a stretch of 28 games in 24 days to close the season couldn’t deter the Marlins from their end goal.
“I think the first thing that I said to Donnie,” Jeter said, “was now you can exhale for at least a day or two and relax. It’s been a year where it seems like every game, you’re on the edge of your seat and it seems like every game we’re playing was a must win, must win, must win.”
Jeter can take a deep breath, too. The Marlins are nearing the end of Year 3 of this rebuild that he helped orchestrate, one that saw the team ship off its big-name players and endure two of the worst years in franchise history in return for an attempt to create organizational depth and an opportunity for sustained success.
The results are finally showing at the big-league level, and the upswing has begun.
It was the Miami Marlins ‘against the world’ in 2020. The end result: A playoff berth.
The Marlins complemented a roster with up-and-coming everyday players and top prospects getting their first taste of big-league action with veterans who had postseason experience. They were buyers at the trade deadline, grabbing arguably the top position player available without having to sacrifice prospects along the way.
They went 31-29 this year, their first winning record since 2009.
And they’re in the playoffs, beginning with a best-of-3 wild card series against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
For the first time in a long time, the results on the field are matching the internal optimism.
“When you walk into the locker room,” third baseman Brian Anderson said, “you feel like you have a chance to win each day. That’s something that I haven’t really been able to be part of and is something that I’ve enjoyed about this season.”
The long game paying off
The ability for the Marlins to be where they are now goes back to those big-name moves the Marlins made at the start of the rebuild.
Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich and Dee Gordon were gone within the first two months. J.T. Realmuto followed suit a year later.
Jeter knew they would be unpopular decisions at first. He admitted to that up front.
But they were necessary actions for the long-term. Between the prospects the Marlins obtained from those trades plus the three drafts under this ownership group, Miami now boasts one of the top minor-league systems in baseball. Twenty-five of the team’s top 30 prospects according to MLB Pipeline were brought into the organization over the past three years. Eleven of those top 30 prospects made their MLB debuts this year.
Sandy Alcantara, the headliner of the Ozuna trade, is the ace of the Marlins’ rotation. Magneuris Sierra and Dan Castano have played valuable roles, too. The team traded Zac Gallen, the fourth player from that trade, to obtain shortstop of the future Jazz Chisholm.
In trading Realmuto, the Marlins got top prospect Sixto Sanchez and catcher Jorge Alfaro. Sanchez is the ace of the future with a 100 mph fastball and deceptive changeup who made his debut this year to much fanfare. Alfaro has been the team’s primary catcher each of the past two years.
Outfielders Lewis Brinson and Monte Harrison, two of four from the Yelich trade, have carved out their own roles on this year’s team. Brinson is platooning in right field with Matt Joyce. Harrison’s speed and aggressiveness on the basepaths and high-end defense have made him a prime late-inning pinch-runner and defensive replacement.
“Our guys are extremely talented,” Jeter said. “You don’t lose sight of that. ... Guys are coming up with a lot of confidence, and they have a lot of ability.”
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They also have players such as Anderson and Miguel Rojas, the team’s de facto leader, who were committed to the cause from the start and are seeing the struggles from the past two years pay off.
“When the new ownership bought the team, they had a plan. They explained to us. They explained it to me,” Rojas said. “... I knew that everything that they did was with a purpose and with a plan. We’ve got guys here now that are getting the chance to be part of this organization and are going to be here for a long time.”
Jeter credits the group efforts from the baseball operations staff — from president Michael Hill to vice president of player development Gary Denbo to the analytics department led by Dan Greenlee to Hadi Raad, Adrian Lorenzo and DJ Svhilik in the scouting department, among a slew of others — for the ownership group’s vision coming to life.
“I like to get the opinions of the people that we put in place,” Jeter said. “I’ve always valued the opinions of the people that we brought in. ... Our group works collaboratively. And there’s a lot of conversations.”
Mattingly, after enduring the last two seasons that culminated in a 120-203 record, knew it was a matter of time before Jeter’s plan paid off at the big-league level, even if the losing records were tough to swallow.
The organization, from ownership to the coaching staff to the players, stayed the course. The bright spots are now beginning to surface.
“You feel it kind of like a groundswell more than anything else because you couldn’t see it,” Mattingly said. “No one was watching, and then you got a lot of typical Marlins shaking [things] up and unloading the whole organization-type talk. That’s where Derek and ownership stuck to their guns. ... Building that is really what’s creating the culture slowly. And then bringing in the right players. You have to get rid of players that don’t want to be here, that don’t have the right attitude. You can’t have that in losing situations. You’ve got to have winning personalities, even if you’re not winning.”
‘It’s time’
But as Mattingly and Jeter well know, the talk about winning and having a winning mentality means nothing unless the team performance can ultimately back it up.
“That’s one of the things we talked about this year: It’s time,” Mattingly said. “It’s time to turn the corner. It’s time to get this thing rolling in the right direction. Now it’s time. That’s really been the theme from spring. It’s time. It’s time. It’s time. Let’s go.”
Jeter was confident it would happen, and he had that confidence from the start.
His mentality since Day 1 as CEO was the same as it was during his 20-year playing career with the Yankees: Go out to field and try to win a ball game.
Through all the hurdles the Marlins went through this year, that mentality never wavered.
“You play the game to win, and you can compete with any team that you’re out there on the field with,” Jeter said. “When I first said it a lot of people thought I was crazy, but these guys believe it, and that’s the reason why we’ve had some success this year. ... You’re starting to see that belief throughout the clubhouse. It’s amazing.”
The job isn’t done yet, though. Far from it.
The next step starts Wednesday against the Cubs and continues until either the Marlins win their third World Series in as many playoff appearances or get eliminated somewhere along the way.
After that, it’s building on the accomplishments from the 2020 season and using the experience of competing in a pennant race to keep the momentum moving forward into 2021.
“We can always improve,” Jeter said. “You always hear me say that we’re not where we want to be because we’re always going to be trying to get better,” Jeter said, “but there is a belief there throughout our organization and confidence will take you a long way.”
