The Marlins made strides in 2020. Derek Jeter hopes he’s earning the fan base’s trust
Derek Jeter wished the situation would have worked out better.
The Miami Marlins, in Year 3 of the rebuild he had a heavy hand in orchestrating, were winning and on their way to clinching their first playoff berth in 17 years.
Marlins Park, however, remained silent. The COVID-19 pandemic forced fans to watch from a distance.
“We wish they could have been in a ballpark, trust me” Jeter said. “This is something that Miami hasn’t experienced in a long time. And we would love for them to be obviously in the stands. That’s not the case this year, but our fans, they’ve been supportive.”
The glass-half-full look at this: 2020, the Marlins hope, was just the start of the Marlins returning to their winning ways. That was the hope when the Marlins’ latest ownership group, led by CEO Jeter and majority owner Bruce Sherman, took over three years ago.
There would be some struggles on the field early on — the result of trading away the team’s top players in order to fortify a minor-league system that was lacking quality depth at just about every position — but, eventually, things would turn around.
The Marlins saw glimpses of that in 2020’s shortened season. They went 31-29, earned the No. 6 seed in this season’s expanded playoff field and swept the Chicago Cubs in a best-of-3 wild card round before being swept themselves in the National League Division Series by the Atlanta Braves.
“I understand that taking over this job and taking over this organization is not an easy task,” Jeter said. “We had a lot of things that we needed to change and a lot of things we needed to do better as an organization. I understood that that took time. I said from Day 1 we’re all going to have to be patient, and I’m not the most patient person. But you have to look at the little wins along the way.”
The 2020 season was a win, but Jeter knows it needs to be the first of many. Can they build on the momentum of making the playoffs in a shortened season? Is the fan base and the South Florida community finally buying into what Jeter and Co. have been selling for the past three years now that there is tangible evidence that it could result in success?
In essence: What’s next for the Miami Marlins?
Jeter’s line on that question remains the same: There’s been progress, but there’s a lot of work left to do.
But he has seen incremental improvements, both on and off the field.
The on-the-field production is clear to see. Miami went from back-to-back seasons in which they won fewer than 40 percent of their games to a winning record in 2020 even after the roster was decimated three games into the season by a COVID-19 outbreak.
Top prospects, many of whom were acquired in trades over the past two-plus seasons, made their debuts and showed signs of their potential. The club also spent in the offseason to bring in veterans — Corey Dickerson, Jesus Aguilar, Brandon Kintzler and Matt Joyce among them — who could both serve as mentors to an up-and-coming team and still perform on the field and bolstered the roster at the trade deadline by acquiring Starling Marte.
The prospects will need to take another step forward and the offense will likely need to be supplemented by a couple offseason pickups as the Marlins prepare for another playoff run in 2021.
But improvements in the win-loss column go hand-in-hand with the franchise’s efforts to gain support from their fan base and other off-field endeavors.
While gauging success on that front is difficult this year because fans weren’t allowed in ballparks, Jeter said they have been receiving more inbound calls than they did the first two years and that fans “are getting excited about not only what this team here is doing in 2020 but they’re also excited about what we’re building here throughout the entire organization.”
“When I got here,” Jeter said, “I said, ‘Listen, we’re here to listen to you. I can’t tell you I’m going to make your experience better if I don’t know what your experience has been. I can’t expect you to trust me if you don’t know me. We have to earn your trust.’
“And I think slowly but surely we’re starting to earn the trust. But we still have a long way to go.”
The business side also saw strides this year and worked with partners to maneuver around the fact that fans weren’t going to be attending games in person this year.
General Mills signed on as a partner this year and had about 30 Cinnamon Toast Crunch characters sitting in left field. Budweiser, which was already a partner, sponsored Miguel Rojas’ “The Clubhouse” show on the Marlins’ YouTube channel. Biscayne Bay Brewing Company created a Marlins-centric lager ahead of the season. The local brewing company was supposed to have a Brew Hall open at Marlins Park this year before the pandemic occurred.
Local partners like Ocean Bank, UHealth and AutoNation among others were still prominent around the ballpark as well.
“They’ve been very, very creative in terms of adding value to our partnerships,” Jeter said of the club’s partnership department, led by David Oxfeld. “Our partners, obviously they invest in the organization because they believe in what we’re building. They believe in our front office, but at the same time, they also are assuming there’s going to be fans in the stands. ... They understand that these are trying times for everyone, not just our industry and trying times for them as well. But we’ve done a great job with our partners to try to add value.”
It’s all a good starting point three years into the rebuild. Showing this type of success can be replicated is the next step.
“I hope people trust the fact that I’m doing this for the best of the organization,” Jeter said. “We didn’t come here to try to chase a championship or a playoff appearance. We want to be sustainable.”
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