The Marlins announced that they have hired Sara Goodrum as director of special projects. Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald relayed the news prior to the official announcement. They also announced that former big leaguer Brandon Mann has been brought aboard as a pitching strategist and announced their previously-reported hiring of Sam Mondry-Cohen as vice-president of player personnel. Craig Mish of the Miami Herald reported the hiring of Mann last month.
Goodrum has been working for the Astros for the past two years. She was hired late in 2021 to be director of player development and served in that role until the organization parted ways with her in October. Prior to that, she worked as a minor league hitting coordinator with the Brewers.
Mann got a brief taste of major league action as a pitcher, getting into seven games for the 2018 Rangers. Since then, he’s worked as pitching coordinator for the Lotte Giants of the KBO and spent the past two years working with Driveline Baseball.
The Marlins have been busy reworking their baseball operations department this winter after general manager Kim Ng moved on. Peter Bendix was hired as president of baseball operations and has subsequently added Gabe Kapler as assistant general manager and Rachel Balkovec as director of player development.
At this point, the incumbent Marlins SS seems to be Gabe Kapler.
Gabe is their official DEI spokesperson.
Basically things are so slow they reported that the Marlins hired 2 new janitors.
Hey a janitor helped Houston win a title.
Touche
Except for the small detail that Altuve, Bergman, Tucker, etc never would have been anything without these 2.
That’s enough, d-nice.
They were the difference in their success, huh, lololol. K.
I wonder if the astros are heading into a wrong direction. Crane allowed luhnow to build a very progressive organization with great scouting, coaching and analytics but it seems that he got some baseball traditionalists in his ear who tell him that all that new school stuff sucks and he should go back to more traditional stuff.maybe goodrum was let go because someone told crane “we need ex big leaguers in those jobs.
The org is still in good shape but a lot of that still comes from the luhnow era. Yeah losing those picks and never drafting high anyway hurt but still the astros playrr factory has dried up considerably, their farm system is now ranked bottom 5 in mlb
That’s *enough*
Firing Luhnow and letting his entire brain trust leave to run the O’s was his biggest mistake. Baltimore is building the Astros 2.0 but with even more young talent. Hopefully Baltimore never lets Elias and Sig go like the Astros did.
Just look at the Cardinals. That is where the Astros are headed.
Not a Houston fan, but Tucker showed up in ‘18. Yordan (not mentioned in your post) in ‘18. Regardless of franchise, two of my favorite hitters.
The rest of the mess, I agree with…
Janitor n a trash can … pretty sweet when u can look dead red fastball n kno it’s coming.
This team seems to be fully focused on DEI hires instead of acquiring good players. They might as well plug in Rosie O’Donnell at SS or C. Might be a better option than the existing options anyway
Chemo850
Think you’re right. Gabe Kapler is going to teach the players to take a knee before the National Anthem.
Above all else, this country stands for gay pride and unlimited immigration. I don’t think Kapler is taking a knee anytime soon.
Rosie O’Donnell. Now that’s a current reference.
Every time a woman gets a job in baseball, some loser has to get needlessly angry. It’s not like teams are lining up to hire Chomo850 and she took your job.
If this team was doing something more than making diversity hires, then people might not get angry. Frankly, I don’t care if they appoint your mom the manager of the club tomorrow, as long as they are also making player moves to improve the club.
Sure thing, chomo850. Very believable.
There are some studies that suggest diversity hires are not bad. Obviously they are bad when the candidate is not qualified enough but when you get a good candidate it can help to get new ideas into the system while having a too homogeneous group like all white men from affluent urban families can lead to having people living in the same networks and ultimately having similar ideas.
Having a more diverse group of employees can lead to less groupthink and thus more openness to New ideas.
What is bad of course is when you hire unqualified people just for diversity sakes but I would assume there have to be some qualified diverse candidates out there.
Yeah, I bet they had Scott Boras on the other line while hiring a woman for the front office. Wokeness (TM) will prevent them from signing a $100M free agent, not their frugality
Did Brewers hitting prospects take a step forward in 2021? I ask because she was in charge of all the Brewers minor league hitting coaches that year and oversaw all direction and training for all the Brewers hitting prospects. The Astros saw enough to hire her to be in charge of all minor league player development. She might not be the best or a super star at the job, but she’s got experience in the business. Obviously the Astros changed direction and replaced her, but Miami bringing in a fresh face and giving them a chance to rebuild their career after a termination really isn’t notable, unless you’re staring at her chest. Organizations do this stuff all the time. Sometimes they just want to pick the brain of someone who worked for an organization they feel was well run. It’s really a non story. So is Mann’s hiring. Both are really just consultants with fancy titles.
If the team was actually focused on diversity staff, Kim Ng would still be there.
Nah. She was brutal. Even her gender couldn’t save her job. She had like five shots at free agents and high draft picks and they all failed
Marlins need SS, power bat in OF/DH/1B not front office personnel.
Dodgers should gift wrap Miguel Rojas and send him back to Miami for a Cubano sandwich.
One woman, one Mann.
And the broad brought the good rum this time!
Miami Marlins: first in DEI, last in in the NL East
Seems that someone missed the 2023 season.
I’m just here for the incels angry that women exist.
Nobody cares about women being in male sports. We’re dominating women sports as it is, so you’re not going to hear many complaints from us
Yet you keep whining
Gee, saw the headline, could have written some of the comments before I saw them. OMG, a woman has been hired….Oh, it’s the end of the Republic.
Another example of Campanis Disease.
It has been a challenging winter to be a Marlins fan. At the begining of the off season the owner decided he had completed his training in being a baseball team owner. Instead of wanting to find the best way between the Yankee, Rays and Dodgers style of organization he wanted to model The Marlins more closely to the Rays.
He found Bendix to become President of Baseball Operations in time for the Winter Meetings. Then it got difficult for the fans.
For the Marlins Front Office to be able to do the amount of work the Rays Front Office does they needed a lot more people.
The Front Office has been growing, but it appears they haven’t found players either in trade or Free Agency to improve the team, within budget.
As Spring Training is about to start, it will be interesting to see if the improved Analytics capacity makes a discernable difference to the players in the coming year.
@UKPhil
Your assessment is accurate and right on target. Good job. So let’s see what happens between now and April. One can only hope Bendix and his crew have a master plan to build the team into a powerhouse. They might – but I’ll be more inclined to believe that scenario when I see a better success rate with respect to the drafting and development of position players. That aspect of their mission shouldn’t be too hard to improve upon. They can’t possibly do worse than the clowns they’re replacing (Jeter/Denbo/deGroot, et al.)