Marlins ripped again by fans after sending belated well wishes to Giancarlo Stanton

Mark Townsend
·Yahoo Sports Contributor

Even when the Miami Marlins attempt to do something nice, baseball fans find it impossible to overlook the manner in which the team handles its business. That was quite apparent on Thursday as fans simply weren’t having any of the Marlins attempt to tweet out well wishes to recently traded outfielders Giancarlo Stanton and Marcell Ozuna.

The Marlins shipped Stanton, the NL’s reigning MVP, to the New York Yankees on Saturday in what amounted to a giveaway. The Yankees, of course, will pick up most of the remaining $295 million on Stanton’s contract, which is of utmost importance to Miami. The team’s firesale under the new ownership group led by Derek Jeter continued on Wednesday, as they finalized a deal that sent Ozuna to the St. Louis Cardinals for four prospects.

Generally, when trades of this magnitude involving players that were franchise cornerstones go down, the team will send out well wishes like those sent out by Miami on Thursday.

Unfortunately for Miami, most fans saw the tweets as either insincere or way too late, especially considering that Stanton’s been a Yankee for nearly a week.

Within minutes, their bitterness was unleashed.

In trading Stanton and Ozuna, the Marlins gave up two-thirds of baseball’s most dynamic outfield. The only member of that group remaining now is Christian Yelich. There’s been talk that Miami would like to keep Yelich — meaning the team sees him as still affordable — but fans are definitely rooting for him to be freed from a team not looking to contend any time soon.

The Marlins were a poorly run franchise throughout Jeffrey Loria’s ownership. That undoubtedly hurt the team’s financial bottomline ahead of the transition to Derek Jeter’s group. Still, the pieces were in place for the Marlins to contend this season and for seasons to come with a few shrewd moves.

Giancarlo Stanton is happy to leave behind the Miami Marlins to join the New York Yankees. (AP)
Giancarlo Stanton is happy to leave behind the Miami Marlins to join the New York Yankees. (AP)

Now though, the franchise and the fanbase have been sentenced to years of rebuilding with no guarantees that this regime will know or do any better than the previous one.

The Marlins fanbase was already pretty thin. Now that any optimism of Jeter’s group giving the team new hope has evaporated, this might be the new look at Marlins Park.

We’re with you Marlins fans. You have our sincerest well wishes.

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Mark Townsend is a writer for Yahoo Sports Have a tip? Email him at bigleaguestew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!