MIAMI — The emotions and the reality didn’t really hit Miguel Rojas until he was in the clubhouse, Miami Marlins players’ home away from home, mourning together with his teammates. The Marlins’ game that afternoon had already been canceled, but the team needed to be together to comprehend and to understand the news they were just told.
“I was in shock,” Rojas said. “Nobody was thinking about baseball or anything. Everyone was thinking ‘What just happened?’ ”
Nothing prepared Rojas or anyone in the Marlins organization for the news he received that Sept. 25, 2016, morning.
Jose Fernandez’s 32-foot boat, Kaught Looking, crashed into a jetty off Government Cut. The accident killed Fernandez, 24, a Cuban-born star pitcher with the Marlins, and his two passengers, Emilio Macias, 27, and Eduardo Rivero, 25. All three had been drinking at American Social, a trendy bar on the Miami River, prior to the crash, a report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission would later find.
“There’s no way that you can ever be prepared to receive that call, then your phone rings and you know it’s not anything good,” Michael Hill, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations at the time and now MLB’s vice president for on-field operations, said Friday. “Never in my wildest thoughts would I imagine that I would answer the phone and he would tell me that one of our players had died in a boating accident.
“It is still, to this day, the worst day of my professional career, receiving that phone call.”
Fernandez was heading into the prime of his career, evolving into the ace of Miami’s pitching rotation and becoming the player a franchise could build around. He was twice an All-Star, had shown he had fully recovered from Tommy John surgery for his right elbow that took place in 2014 and was well on his way to earning a potential nine-figure contract when he became eligible for free agency after the 2018 season.
While it’s unknown how his career from that point would have transpired — whether he would ultimately have stayed in Miami long term or have been traded while his stock was high, whether he would have signed a contract extension or hit free agency when eligible, or even if his rise to superstardom would have continued — one thing is certain now.
The ripple effect of Fernandez’s death is still being felt on the field for the Marlins. Miami has had losing seasons in four of the past five years — the lone exception being MLB’s pandemic-shortened 2020 season — and gone through an ownership change that prompted the organization’s latest on-field rebuild, one that has seen limited results so far at the MLB level.
“A lot of changes,” said Rojas, the last remaining player on Miami’s roster from that day nearly five years ago. “From the moment that happened, the organization changed right away.”
‘I want to be the best’
Fernandez made what turned out to be his final start five days before the crash, throwing eight shutout innings with 12 strikeouts in a 1-0 win against the Washington Nationals on Sept. 20, 2016.
His career, which spanned just 76 starts, included a 38-17 record, a 2.58 ERA and 589 strikeouts over 471 1/3 innings.
Fernandez’s goal as he stated after his first spring training bullpen session in 2013, just months before his MLB debut: “I want to be the best. I’m not going to lie. I don’t want to be second best. I want to be the best.”
Fernandez’s competitive nature always stuck out to Rojas, who joined the Marlins organization before the 2015 season. It didn’t matter if it was pitching, shagging balls in the outfield, hitting (“He would always challenge himself to hit a home run to center field,” Rojas said) or playing card games. Fernandez wanted to find a way to be a step ahead of everyone else.
“That’s the energy that he brought every single day to the ballpark,” Rojas said, “and the joy that he played and practiced with every single day.”
Don Mattingly, who became the Marlins’ manager in 2016, wears a bracelet with Fernandez’s No. 16. When he works out, he does exercises in reps of 16.
“You think back about Jose and what he meant,” Mattingly said, “and just what kind of spirit he was.”
Fernandez’s value to the team came primarily with his ability to throw a baseball with his right arm. His fastballs — primarily a four-seam but with an occasional sinker sprinkled in — averaged between 95 and 96 mph. His curveball was his primary strikeout pitch, one that resulted in a nearly 50% swing-and-miss rate in his final season. It’s why the Marlins were enamored with him from the start of the scouting process before eventually selecting him with the 14th overall pick in the 2011 MLB draft.
But his spirit personified that of someone given the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. He unsuccessfully tried three times to defect from Cuba and was jailed each time. On the fourth attempt, at age 15, he got out with his mother on a crowded small boat.
“He took the South Florida market by storm,” Hill said, “with everything.”
‘A franchise-changing loss’
When Mattingly joined the Marlins in 2016 after his stint with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he wasted little time thinking about the potential the club had.
He had Fernandez as his budding ace. There was speedy Dee Gordon as his leadoff hitter. There was an outfield of Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich (with Ichiro Suzuki as his fourth outfielder, mind you). J.T. Realmuto was an up-and-coming catcher.
“When I first came to Miami and looked at that team,” Mattingly said, “I thought ‘Man, we’ve got a chance’ when you look at the names that we had put together.”
That team went into the trade deadline as buyers but finished 79-82 — the Marlins’ most wins in a season since 2010 — and seven-and-a-half games out of the wild card.
And then things changed.
It started with Fernandez’s death that final week of the 2016 regular season. It’s impossible to replace a player of his caliber, especially with the Marlins’ payroll restraints.
“That loss,” Hill said, “is obviously a franchise-changing loss. No doubt about it.”
But the Marlins tried to find ways to remedy the roster in the short-term.
That offseason, the Marlins signed Edinson Volquez and traded for Dan Straily to round out their starting rotation, a group that collectively posted a 5.12 ERA that was the fifth-worst mark in baseball in 2017. Straily, Jose Urena and Adam Conley were the only pitchers to make 20 starts apiece and throw more than 100 innings.
Wei-Yin Chen, in the second year of a five-year, $80 million deal, was sidelined for most of 2017 with left arm fatigue.
Volquez, playing on a two-year, $22 million deal, made 17 starts — including the sixth no-hitter in Marlins history — before being shut down for the season with left knee tendinitis. The Marlins released him that offseason.
Miami went 77-85, second in the National League East but a distant 20 games back of the division champion Nationals, despite having an offense that featured the NL’s most valuable player (Stanton and his 59 home runs), baseball’s stolen base leader (Gordon with 60) and five regulars in the lineup who hit at least .278 with double-digit home runs.
Shortly after the 2017 season, Jeffrey Loria sold the team to the Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter ownership group.
The organization’s latest rebuild was about to begin.
Gordon, Ozuna, Stanton and Yelich were traded within two months of each other ahead of the 2018 season. Realmuto was traded just before 2019 spring training.
The goal: Stock up the Marlins’ virtually nonexistent minor league system. Build the organization’s depth from the ground up.
“Kind of a start over,” Mattingly said.
The Marlins understandably struggled at the MLB level the first two years, going a combined 120-203 in 2018 and 2019. They reached the playoffs during the 60-game 2020 season with a 31-29 record, clinching the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 2003 on the fourth anniversary of Fernandez’s death. They won their best-of-3 wild card series with the Chicago Cubs before being swept in the NL Division Series.
The Marlins, 64-88 this season with a week and a half left to play, are now trying to create their new core of players who could help them finally get over that hurdle in the not-so-distant future.
They have Sandy Alcantara as their new ace. Trevor Rogers has impressed in his first full season and are optimistic about top prospects Edward Cabrera and Sixto Sanchez forming the backbone of the rotation if they can stay healthy.
First baseman Lewin Diaz, second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr., and outfielders Bryan De La Cruz and Jesus Sanchez — all acquired under the new ownership group — are showing potential to be a budding new core to go along with Rojas and third baseman Brian Anderson.
“The question you ask is ‘Are you ready to win a championship with these guys? Are we ready to win a division with this group?’ “ Mattingly said. “And if they are part of it, what do we need with them? Do you need veteran leadership around that where you have guys that have had a little more time and been through more to lead that group? Those are questions that you have to ask, but I think you have to like what you’re seeing.”
