Dave Hyde: Marlins new manager will matter when his players matter (hint: not this coming season)

MIAMI — Clayton McCullough seems like a smart man. Friendly. Even-keeled. Quick with a thought, too, like when he was asked if he was a patient man and he said, “Only if I have to be.”

The game being played in South Florida is wondering why he wanted the Miami Marlins job, though there’s only 30 of them out there and this job represents the top of the mountain to a man who spent years working the minor leagues.

“This is where I wanted to be,” he said Monday upon being introduced as the Marlins manager on a loanDepot Park concourse.

The harder part is deciding just how far down the following list of Marlins issues you have to go until the manager matters in this franchise:

— 29th in earned-run-average;

— 25th in runs scored;

— 25th in payroll;

— Zero players on MLB.com’s latest list of Top 100 players;

— Three players rated on MLB.com’s Top 100 prospects, led by No. 46 Tomas White, a left-handed pitcher who played in Class A last season.

Are we getting close to where McCullough’s culture and strategic decisions matter? Where the daily demands he makes come into play? Well, there’s still this:

— 29th in attendance;

— 26th in local TV deal;

— 29th in revenue, according to Forbes.

The manager will matter, you see, when the players he writes on the lineup card matter. And those will only matter when general manager Peter Bendix creates a supply line from the minors. And it’s not going to happen this coming season.

Bendix is still in the stage that any remaining talent, like Sandy Alcantara returning from Tommy John surgery, is on the trade block. Alcantara’s salary rises from $20 million last season to $37 million in 2025, too. Will he even be around on opening day?

“I sure hope so,” Bendix said.

The fantasy is finding an owner willing to lose money. Good luck finding a billionaire like that. The Marlins’ owner never has been one of them. Not H. Wayne Huizenga, who brought baseball here, won a World Series, then asked players wanting to keep the 1997 champions together to defray some of his losses.

The next Marlins owner, John Henry, became part of a three-team ownership trade and a model owner with the model Boston Red Sox. Next came Jeffrey Loria, who took his millions out of town after getting a publicly-built stadium. So, why this hope Bruce Sherman would fork over tens of millions?

“I’ll spend money (on players) when it’s the right time to spend,” Sherman said Monday.

There are only two paths to win in baseball: Outspend teams or be smarter than them. The Marlins haven’t been, either. Derek Jeter didn’t come within sight of front-office smarts. Can Bendix do better? And how patient is McCullough as this process works?

“I’d be considered a patient individual,” he said. “But with that patience is a sense of urgency in each day as well. The path of players’ improvement it not always linear. It has some winding curves to it.

“There’s patience involved in letting things take their course. You believe in the character of the player. You believe in the talent. You know that it’s there. So then you strike a balance each day of, you know, we’re working to get better. There’s no going backwards.”

Skip Schumaker was 42 upon accepting the Marlins job two years ago. He was named the National League manager of the year after the Marlins made the playoffs his first season.

Schumaker opted out of his contract after last season. He didn’t want to be part of a full-scale rebuild. He saw his few players, Luis Arraez to Jazz Chisholm, traded off for prospects. He had to pencil in a lineup card that was similar to veteran Jim Leyland holding up his lineup card one day during the abysmal 1998 rebuild.

“Worst lineup I’ve ever written,” Leyland said.

It won’t have much historical heft if McCullough, 44, says the same. You have to wish him well. He worked his way up through years playing and managing in the minors, became the Los Angeles Dodgers first base coach and just won a World Series ring in October.

A month later, he’s back in the minors. It’s not hard to see why he took the job. The hard part is understanding if his job really matters until the players he manages actually matter.