Marlins none too pleased over Red Sox Spring Training lineup

From SI.com: The Miami Marlins, who won 62 games last season and routinely trotted out a regular season lineup featuring players like Jeff Mathis, Donovan Solano and 37-year-old Placido Polanco, are apparently in a tizzy over the spring training lineup the Red Sox put together for Thursday’s Grapefruit League game in Jupiter, Fla. That’s according to the Sun-Sentinel‘s Marlins beat reporter Juan C. Rodriguez, who wrote that team executives were “outraged” over the squad of minor leaguers that Boston sent to Miami’s Roger Dean Stadium to play a team that will feature 36-year-old Rafael Furcal at second base in games that actually count.

Few things here. First, the fact that the Marlins jacked up the prices for this game is laughable. It's a Spring Training game. There's no such thing as a "Premium Game" in the spring, I don't care if the Red Sox are defending World Series champions. Even if the rule calls for a minimum of "four major leaguers" in an exhibition game, that's still less than half of your typical starting lineup. (Also, who even knew about this rule until the Marlins complained here). Say what you will about the NFL pre-season, and it is god-awful, but at least teams aren't able to jack up prices just because the defending Super Bowl champion is in town.

The bigger point here is that we're talking about the Marlins. They went 62-100 last year. An organization with a franchise winning percentage of .470. An organization that holds firesales at least once per presidential term. Seriously, I strongly suggest trying the Marlins Opening Day Lineups quiz on Sporcle. They continuously trot out a roster deprived of "major leaguers." Aside from their star Giancarlo Stanton, they had exactly one player with an OPS over .700 (min. 300 at-bats) last year: Logan Morrison, at a whopping .709. By the way, they traded him this off-season for Carter Capps, a pitcher with a 5.04 ERA in 84 career innings. 

Their team president, David Samson, took time off last summer to compete on Survivor....and was the first voted off. The losing culture is contagious. 

We're talking about an organization that has finished no higher than 28th in attendance since 2001 save for 2004 (defending World Series champs, finished 24th) and 2012 (first year of new ballpark, 18th). Speaking of that ballpark, which opened in 2012 and was financed using 59% of the tax payers of Miami-Dade County's money....didn't these tax payers assume that the Marlins would finally stop selling off their best players? 

Nope. After signing Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell to the three of the largest free-agent contracts in team history in the winter of 2011-12, all three were gone after just one season. A "former Marlins all-star team" would include names like Miguel Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, Josh Beckett, Dan Uggla....and that's just from recent cheapness. Players like Mike Lowell, Ivan Rodriguez, Carlos Delgado, Mike Piazza, Moises Alou, Derrek Lee, Edgar Renteria are just a few retired players who at one point played for the Fish.

Perhaps the funniest part of this whole non-story is the result of the game. It was a scoreless tie due to a rainout, which is funny in itself, but the Red Sox "scrubs" out-hit the Marlins 7-2 through eight innings. You can't make this stuff up.

Bottom line: this team has no leg to stand on when griping about the roster practices of others. And bring back this old logo, while we're at it. They literally can't do anything right.