'Frustrated' Derek Jeter on Miami Marlins' rough start to 2018: 'I have no patience'

Derek Jeter has had a steep learning curve in Year 1 as Marlins CEO.

Perhaps his biggest adjustment: How to handle losing. It's new to him.

Forty-one games into his rookie season with the Yankees, New York had a 25-16 record.

At the quarter pole of his rookie season as MLB executive, Miami is 15-26.

"You get frustrated," Jeter told reporters before the Marlins hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night. "Just like I'm pretty sure the guys in the clubhouse are frustrated. You want them to be frustrated. At the same time there is optimism. I like some of the things I see."

Jeter added: "I have no patience. [But] I’ve been preaching patience."

Learning how to practice what he preaches has not been easy for Jeter, the 14-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion.

Expectations should have been tempered based on Miami's decision to gut its roster and start over. And while the big-league ball club is in last place a month and a half into the season, its Triple-A affiliate entered Wednesday's action above .500.

That has Jeter excited. But the big-league club admittedly has a long way to go.

"I’m positive by nature," Jeter said. "What I try to do is take positives from every game. There are a lot of good things we’ve seen. Obviously no one is happy with the win-loss record. But there are a lot of positives. We’ve been in a lot of games. We’ve got to figure out ways to win those games. That’s part of the learning process. Guys have to learn how to win. Our guys are learning. They’re playing hard. I like the effort."

The Marlins' starting pitching has been a pleasant surprise after a disastrous first few weeks of the season. With Dan Straily and Wei-Yin Chen back from injury, the team's starting pitching ERA (4.74, entering Wednesday) has crept back to respectability.

What remains awful: The home attendance.

Through Tuesday's action, the Marlins ranked last, drawing just 10,675 per game — more than 4,000 fewer than Tampa Bay, the league's 29th-ranked franchise in terms of attendance.

On Wednesday, the team announced it had hired a new vice president of ticket sales and service, Travis Apple.

Jeter's directive to Apple: "Get more people in here. That’s the bottom line. Obviously, we talked about last time how we’re going to report our paid attendance, we’re going to continue doing that. But we’re not happy with the number of people in here. A lot of that goes with how we’re performing on the field, too. We’re going to constantly try to improve the attendance here. "

This story was originally published May 16, 2018 at 6:31 PM with the headline "'Frustrated' Derek Jeter on Miami Marlins' rough start to 2018: 'I have no patience'."