ESPN lists what to watch in MLB for 2009. The list is a good one, but perhaps the best item on it is the Florida Marlins and their pitching staff.
I can't get Bobby Cox's words out of my head. It was the last week of September. And here's what he said: "You know who's got the best starting pitching in our division? It's the Marlins. And it's not even close." Nobody, of course, was saying that about that team a year ago, when the Fish were getting ready to roll out a rotation that had won a total of 23 games the year before. But now, they have Ricky Nolasco, Josh Johnson, Chris Volstad, Anibal Sanchez and Andrew Miller lined up.
They have a collection of supersonic bullpen arms. They have Cameron Maybin moving into center. And Logan Morrison is just over the horizon, with the minor-league teenage home-run champ, Mike Stanton, right behind him. So despite all the Marlins' questions and inexperience, this is one dangerous team. I'm not sure if an 84-78 team qualifies as a "surprise" the way, say, the 2008 Rays did. But when a franchise with a sub-$40 million payroll looms as a major contender, that's always a "surprise" in my dictionary.
-- Jayson Stark
What team reinvents itself year after troubling year like the Florida Marlins? I think back to James Earl Jones soliloquy about America and baseball in
Field of Dreams.
America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.
So have the Marlins, and they're still coming up with ways of reinventing themselves.
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