Peter Bendix: Marlins need to be ‘unafraid to try some new things’ to improve in 2024
It’s safe to say Peter Bendix has had a pretty busy past few days.
It began this weekend, when he had his in-person interview for the Miami Marlins’ president of baseball operations job. The Marlins formally announced Bendix on Monday, shortly before he flew out to Phoenix for MLB’s annual general managers meetings.
“The word that comes to mind is whirlwind,” said Bendix, who spent the past 15 years with the Tampa Bay Rays and the past two as the Rays’ general manager. “Things come together quickly. That’s kind of how things happen in this industry. I know that’s a thing, and yet until it happens to you, you’re not fully prepared for it. ... [I’m] hitting the ground running.”
Bendix on Tuesday made his first public comments since being hired by the club, speaking on Marlins Radio’s “Hot Stove” show.
The main newsworthy comments:
Bendix said he does not have a timetable to hire a general manager — if he hires anyone at all — to be his No. 2.
”I don’t want to force anything,” Bendix said, “and certainly don’t want to make any rash decisions.”
He also said the team’s top priority (unsurprisingly) is adding to the offense following the departure of All-Star designated hitter Jorge Soler.
Bendix noted that the Marlins will likely need to do that despite not being able to compete with the payrolls of the top teams in their division — similar to what the Rays did during his decade-and-a-half with Tampa Bay.
“What we’re going to need to do is to be unafraid to try some new things and really make every dollar play like $5 and really try to figure out what we can do to compete with with teams that are going to be spending a lot more money than us,” Bendix said. “That challenge is just so exciting.”
Here are highlights from the 15-minute interview.
▪ Why was this the right opportunity for you?: “There’s so many positives with this organization and there’s so much opportunity here to really kind of make my own stamp on the organization and build on so many things that are heading in the right direction. We saw it last year with the major league team making the playoffs and having a really exciting year. There’s a ton of talent in the organization top to bottom. Players, people everything. I’m really looking forward to getting to know everybody, to understanding everyone’s strengths and help maybe fill in some of the weaknesses.”
▪ Is it different taking over a team that is coming off a playoff appearance?: “It’s not the typical situation where a team is turning over their top leadership, but it’s an appealing part of it too because, like I said, there’s a lot of talent on this team, as evidenced by how successful last year was. Some things went right last year, but that happens in every year. You need that to happen. There’s a ton of pitching talent. There’s a ton of interesting young players and a lot of different people with different skill sets. Skip [Schumaker] is a great manager from everything that I’ve learned about him so far and I’m really excited to get to know him and his staff. There’s just a lot of positives around the organization.”
▪ How do you plan to build the club and keep the winning momentum from 2023 going?: “I certainly have have no intentions of breaking everything down. It’s all about building long term, sustainable success. And those are buzzwords, right. What does that actually mean? It means making really disciplined, long-term focused decisions at every point. And so how do you build sustainable success in that way? You have to be always thinking long-term. And that doesn’t always mean that you’re sacrificing the short-term, right? You can do both at once. But having that long-term vision in place at the same time and always thinking about one eye on the short-term, one eye on the long term and building to a point where the Marlins can have important games in September every year.”
▪ How did Tampa Bay have so much success?: “It really starts with the people. It starts with everybody in the organization pulling in the same direction. It starts with setting clear expectations and clear guidelines for what we’re trying to achieve and then empowering really good people at all levels to go achieve those goals. A baseball operations department is an enormous machine, an enormous thing that is ultimately comprised of people with different backgrounds all trying to build a winning team. If you get the right people in the right spots, you empower them to do their jobs, you give them freedom and flexibility to try something new. That might not always work, but trying new things is part of our identity. It’s part of what we need to do in order to to stay ahead of the pack.”
This story was originally published November 8, 2023 at 10:04 AM.
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