While We Wait: Marlins Should Make A-Rod Their Next Manager

While we wait is going to be a daily series where we showcase a post from another site, giving full credit of course to the author, that I thought would be an interesting read while we wait. This will obviously be a thing we see when the Yankees are playing those annoying 10:05 pm ET starts on the west coast and not a regular occurrence, unless you guys show some support and really enjoy the posts of course. With the first post in the "While We Wait" series we showcase the USA Today's post that states that the Miami Marlins should make Alex Rodriguez their next manager. Enjoy:

Though the Marlins are only nine games deep into their experiment with former GM Dan Jennings in the manager’s chair, Buster Olney of ESPN.com presents a fascinating for Miami’s next manager: Alex Rodriguez.

Olney writes:

He knows situations, he knows players, he watches other players. He is a fan of the sport. I would assume that if Rodriguez does not get a job on some team’s staff after retiring, he’ll probably work in television, and I suspect he would be pretty good at it because it’s clear, when you hear him discuss specific parts of the game, that he has accumulated a staggering amount of knowledge about how the game is played….

Rodriguez is owed about $41 million for the next two seasons, and even though he has been better than expected this season, Rodriguez knows his best days as a player are in the past. He might leap at the chance for a post-career lifeline and approve a deal, and if the Yankees could save $2 million or $3 million a year for the next two years in some sort of settlement with the Marlins, maybe they’d be open to it, in turn keeping open the DH spot for their aging roster.

Olney’s entire, Insider-only column is worth reading, as he details Rodriguez’s positive relationships with young players and the city of Miami. It makes a pretty reasonable case that hiring Rodriguez would be a decent baseball move.

It would also be an incredible and hilarious troll move on the part of Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, like even far beyond the time his team hired its GM as field manager despite no experience playing, coaching or managing professionally.

One big issue with the plan, though: A-Rod is still playing really well. Actually, his .919 OPS would lead all Miami regulars. So if the Marlins can really have Rodriguez from the Yankees for a couple million dollars’ worth of salary relief, they’d probably be better off with him at a corner infield spot than on the bench. Or — or! — they could make him the game’s first player-manager since Pete Rose.

We say: Do it. Do it, do it, do it.