Miami Marlins Could Become Sellers

2012 has been a rough year for the Miami Marlins, and the club is running out of time to convince management not to give up on this season. With a 44-48 record and 5.5-game deficit in the wild card race, the Marlins must get hot in a hurry or the team could be sellers before the July 31 trade deadline.

"I thing every game now is magnified," Marlins president of baseball operations Larry Beinfest told the Miami Herald Thursday. The team already acquired Carlos Lee earlier this month to solidify the offense, but the team still went 3-4 in the first week after the All-Star Break.

"With the talent we have here, we should have won more games than we have, and it hasn’t happened," Beinfest added. But before Beinfest and general manager Mike Hill make another move to improve the team for this season, the Marlins need to start moving in the right direction. "We need to win games just to make sure we’re on the periphery of even thinking about getting into things."

In fact, Florida might even trade someone to set the team up for 2013 if the losses continue. The team has been rumored to be shopping some impending free agents, and Beinfest is not surprised.

"I think we’ve underperformed — underachieved — and the position we’re in, I think it’s normal to hear a lot of things about us, especially [given] how public we were this winter about being all in."

The Marlins have been part of some wild rumors already, the most notable one being a deal for Carl Crawford that had the Marlins shipping Hanley Ramirez and Heath Bell to Boston. That one turned out to be false, though the Marlins did test the waters for Crawford.

Last winter the team added $22 million in 2012 payroll (and more in subsequent years) to acquire Bell, Jose Reyes, and Mark Buehrle, becoming one of MLB's biggest spenders before opening the new stadium.

That plan has not turned out as hoped for, and time is running out for the Marlins to reverse the script.

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