It was the third day of May. Major League Baseball’s season was barely five weeks old. A trade of any kind — let alone a deal involving the reigning National League batting champion — is exceedingly rare in those circumstances. And yet there was Arráez, on live television, suddenly the face of what looked like the start of another
During Peter Bendix’s first six months as the Marlins’ president of baseball operations, he mostly stood pat during the offseason, watched as Miami lost 24 of its first 33 games, then traded its most beloved player for a package of four San Diego Padres prospects, a series of events that has drawn the ire of a beleaguered market. All of it, Bendix stressed, aligns with his aspirations of building a consistent winner to break the rebuild cycle that has defined the Marlins’ three-decade existence. But it could take time.
He’s asking for patience from a thinning fan base that has seemingly run out of it.
“I understand what fans are hoping for,” Bendix said this week. “We’re hoping for the same things. And I understand that there is frustration and disappointment. We’re feeling those things, too. We all really want to win. We all really want to win as soon as we can. And we want to win in a sustainable way.”
When asked to illustrate his plan for doing so, he paused for nine seconds.
“The plan,” Bendix finally said, “is to be as disciplined as we can with our decision-making and to …”
He paused again.
“Yeah, it really comes down to being disciplined and having great people in all aspects of our organization so that we have the best information, the best coaches, the best development, the best scouts, all those different things.”
Bendix is careful with his words these days, not because he lacks clarity in his vision but because the tension between him and Marlins fans seems so high. Bendix’s hiring — in early November, after a 15-year run with a Tampa Bay Rays franchise that has become the model for winning on a tight budget — came three weeks after the trailblazing Kim Ng stepped down over what qualified as a demotion after she helped engineer a surprising wild-card berth in 2023.
Rather than capitalize on the momentum of that playoff team, Bendix settled on a conservative offseason in which he declined to bring back Jorge Soler, signed just one major league free agent — veteran shortstop Tim Anderson for $5 million — and dropped payroll even further.
Three weeks into the regular season, USA Today reported that Skip Schumaker, the reigning NL Manager of the Year, had asked the Marlins to decline their option in his contract for 2025, a clear sign he wants no part of a rebuild. Then came the Arráez trade. One of Bendix’s comments in the wake of that deal, in which he acknowledged the Marlins were “unlikely to make the playoffs this year,” only triggered more animus.
“I understand it,” Bendix said. “It’s because people really want a consistently contending team.”
