BY SCOTT MORGANROTH
How would you define the 2024 Miami Marlins season?
There are numerous ways and as of today, the Fish are 43-74 going into this afternoon’s game vs the San Diego Padres.
Before Opening Day, Miami found out that Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara would miss the entire season due to injury. Shortly after that, another hurler Eury Perez would be another season ending casualty.
As the losses piled up early, Miami shipped 2023 National League batting champion, Luis Arraez to the Padres in May as President of Baseball Operations Peter Bendix was ready to sell early.
I can only imagine how much ink the Marlins used with player transactions all-season long.
For myself, it’s been interesting trying to find feature stories as the players came and went.
In Detroit, thanks to the efforts of Luis Dorante Jr. who has become my most dependable resource in the Marlins organization, we landed outfielder Dane Myers. Unfortunately for Myers, about a month ago, he would get injured.
During trade deadline week, Dorante and I exchanged text messages when I traveled to Milwaukee and covered a game on July 28, 2024.
I sent Dorante text messages to get pitchers Trevor Rogers and AJ Puk, but they were traded before we could get to them.
We both laughed about it because we knew this would be a challenging week to get players.
Because Sunday games are earlier, it’s close to impossible to get any interviews.
But at Noon Central Time, Dorante worked his magic again as he told me he could land a relief pitcher. I told him to go for it.
That pitcher turned out to be Bryan Hoeing and after briefly looking at his bio, I knew I had a great catch.
Hoeing hails from Indiana and his first name is spelled the same way as my middle name. I have a lot of fun talking to Midwesterner’s.
Hoeing is one of the most down to earth players I’ve ever dealt with.
Hoeing played two sports. In addition to baseball, he also played basketball.
There is nothing better than talking to an Indiana athlete who plays basketball when you consider that the late Bobby Knight coached the Indiana Hoosiers. My favorite movie of all time is “Hoosiers.”
We talked about basketball and the Marlins recent flurry of trades that even included Jazz Chisholm being shipped to the New York Yankees.
He also gave his thoughts about playing for Marlins skipper, Skip Schumaker.
What would occur after Sunday was another unbelievable story that will appear in “Lessons From The Microphone, Part 2” that will be released at the beginning of 2025.
What did happen at the trade deadline was closer Tanner Scott and you guessed it, Hoeing was traded to the Padres in exchange for prospects.
You talk about timing, this was unbelievable.
Who knows if I’ll be able to land Hoeing again this afternoon but if I don’t, I’m just thankful that we had a chance to have a good time and now I’ll begin tracking his career.
In baseball, you never know what stories unexpectedly fall into your lap. But when they come, it’s vitally important that you pounce on them and have great friends like Dorante in your corner to help you get the job done.
Scott Morganroth can be reached at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter/X @TribuneSouth.
Also, to see his broadcasts, please subscribe to the South Florida Tribune YouTube Channel.
Scott’s Book, “Lessons From the Microphone” can be purchased on Amazon-Kindle and Barnes’s & Noble.
