OT; Marlin's plight - offseason baseball

Not to hijack, but Torii Hunter is also in Detroit meeting with the Tigers. That would be a good get.

Alvarez and Nicolino are good prospects, but this is pretty crazy. Interesting to see if they go after Hamilton now, or if they really did just sign all these guys last year to get the stadium. I certainly wouldn't put it past Loria.

So I wonder what the asking price is for Giancarlo Stanton then, might as well see if they'll take Castellanos and Garcia. The Marlins got boned in the returns on this deal.

I'm actually semi pissed off that the Tigers wern't the ones making this trade, I mean the Marlins are basically the Tigers farm team.

Not sure I'd call the Marlins' situation a "plight" as it implies it's not their fault.  Jeff Loria is the best in the world at running a franchise into the ground while siphoning off every last cent.

may face serious pressure in their division, as if they didn't this year.  But the Orioles and Blue Jays are coming.

would love to see MLB get rid of a couple teams. Miami would be a great place to start.

Just play the all-star game in the nice stadium but get rid of their team. Hell nobody wants to even watch Tampa and they are pretty good.

The Marlins find a way to build the team up for 2 or so years then replenish.  They've won 2 world series since their inception. 

Also, their fans just don't show up, for starters.  Maybe it's because they sucked this year, or maybe because fans in Miami just have better things to do in the summer.

That said, I don't get how hot/cold they can be.  Last season was the exact opposite approach to managing a team... with long-term deals.

/random thoughts.

EDIT: more random notes... the Marlins are the only thing that stood in the way from the Yankees winning the WS for 1996 - 2000.  If you factor in another expansion team (D-Backs in 2001) they both helped prevent the most dominant streak in modern US Sports (potentially ever)

I've been saying for over a decade that baseball needed to contract two teams at least.  Especiallynow that the Astros have moved to the American league meaning there's an odd number of teams in each league and every day will feature an interleague matchup.

There are some teams that simply don't have the fan support regardless of their talent.  Some of the places with crappy attendance actually have decent franchises, but no one comes to see them.  Oakland was a crazy environment in the playoffs and down the stretch, but for years they've drawn fewer than 20,000 per game, while a half dozen teams are doubling that.

Even Tampa Bay has been a competitive team but struggles to draw over 24,000.

I personally think MLB has 24 markets that can sustain major league baseball. 

My recommendation would be to contract to 24 teams, increase rosters to 27 or 28 players, and put an end to guys like Ryan Raburn ever starting baseball games at the major league level.  More teams would be competing because theorhetically the talent gap would be smaller (I'm guessing more players would rather start on some team than ride the bench on a loaded team).

Most of the lower attendance teams are in warm weather cities.  Marlins, Rays, Diamondbacks, Astros, Athletics, and Mariners.  Perhaps MLB should start the season a week or two earlier but instead of having games in Japan, have these fairer weather cities host games the first 2-3 weeks (with some other teams like the Braves, Rangers, Giants, Padres, Dodgers, Angels, etc. hosting home openers)  Even it out so no team got an unfair number of home games and divide the revenue between the 24 teams while investing some into the stadiums that host the games - perhaps letting the reform impact the minor league system and having stronger minor league teams at the top level playing in some of the fringe major-league markets.

Roll out a draft to distribute the players in these systems through the rest and allow all their coaches and scouts to be free agents.  I promise you would see better baseball and scarcity would drive demand.