The Miami Marlins have not experienced a winning season since 2009, and Giancarlo Stanton is done with all of that garbage.
The Marlins slugger said on Saturday ahead of spring training opening that it’s time to end the excuses for the franchise.
“We’ve gone through every excuse in the book — [we’re] young, new people, this and that,” Stanton said via MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro. “There’s no more time for that. We have our core. We have our set lineup. Just about everyone was here from last year, except the coaching staff. We’ve got to put it together, man.”
The Marlins hired Don Mattingly from the Dodgers as manager, and they added Barry Bonds as hitting coach. They also have a decent core that also includes position players Dee Gordon, Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna. They should have star pitcher Jose Fernandez for a full season, to go along with Wei-Yin Chen, Tom Koehler, Jarred Cosart and Adam Conley. The pieces are there for the Marlins to be competitive but it won’t be easy in the difficult NL East. You have the Mets coming off a World Series run and a very strong Nationals team as their competition, as well as the rebuilding Phillies and Braves.
After missing a good part of the last two seasons with injury, a big key to the Marlins’ success in 2016 will be Stanton’s ability to stay healthy and put up MVP numbers. You figure if he can take care of step one and do more things like this to baseballs, the numbers will follow.
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