OAKLAND -- Peter Bendix was just a 12-year-old Cleveland baseball fan when his team was bested by the Marlins in the 1997 World Series. Bendix also remembers how the Marlins' front office in subsequent months traded away the core of the championship team.
Now, as he sits atop the Miami organization as president of baseball operations roughly six months into his tenure, Bendix wants to put the Marlins in the best position to play competitive ball consistently.
"This is an extremely competitive industry, with a lot of very smart people trying to achieve the same thing, winning a World Series," Bendix said in a conference call before Saturday's 20-4 loss in Oakland. "In order to get this organization where it needs to be to winning 90-plus games year in and year out, it takes difficult decisions.”
Bendix took a big swing and made a difficult decision this weekend.
On Saturday morning, the Marlins officially traded two-time batting champ Luis Arraez to the Padres for right-handed reliever Woo-Suk Go and three prospects: OFs Dillon Head (Padres No. 6 prospect), Jakob Marsee (No. 9) and 1B/OF Nathan Martorella (No. 13).
Bendix said he weighed the emotional impact of trading a beloved clubhouse leader like Arraez, but added that the Marlins couldn’t refuse the Padres’ offer.
“When we got this offer on Luis -- for a tremendous amount of young talent that we really think is going to be very helpful for us, long term -- it was just something we couldn't walk past,” Bendix said.
Arraez notched a double in his first at-bat with the Padres on Saturday evening, en route to a four-hit debut. The Marlins, meanwhile, suffered a lopsided loss to the A’s Saturday that included a 10-run, 15-batter third inning by Oakland.
The A’s scored the first 13 runs of the game before the Marlins finally broke through on a sixth-inning solo shot by Nick Fortes. Bryan De La Cruz launched his sixth homer of the year in the eighth inning, but it got so ugly that infielder Emmanuel Rivera had to pitch the final frame for Miami.
“We just got our butt kicked today,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “You’re gonna have those games happen every now and then throughout the year.”
It’s been an emotional 24 hours for the Marlins, but they still have 127 games to go this season and learn how to navigate the future without their star leadoff man. Miami has lost its first two games since Arraez left the lineup, but Bendix is taking a long view on the situation.
Bendix confirmed that the Marlins will be paying a large portion of Arraez’s salary, though Bendix didn’t go into specifics. Bendix praised Marlins owner Bruce Sherman for writing the checks to get better prospects, as the Padres are trying to keep the payroll down for their star-studded roster.
“It unlocked better prospects, a much better baseball package for us, something that we think is going to pay off tenfold in the future with these better players,” Bendix said.
Bendix doesn’t want to say this is the start of another rebuild.
“I'm not going to put any terminology on it,” Bendix said. “I think it's consistent with that message and the vision that I've had since my time taking over the organization’s baseball operations, which is that we have one eye on the future, one eye on the present. And our goal remains to build toward long-term sustainable success.”
Bendix admitted that the team’s 9-25 start to the season played a role in the trade decision, but stopped short at saying he expects his team to throw up the white flag.
“The message is to continue to work hard. There's a lot of baseball left,” Bendix said. “That is something that is felt inside this clubhouse. There's a bunch of professionals here, the players, the staff, everybody involved with this organization.”