The Miami Marlins are hiring Tampa Bay general manager Peter Bendix to head their baseball operations department, a person with knowledge of the decision said Sunday night.
The move is expected to be finalized in the coming days, said the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the Marlins had not announced the deal. It could be completed in time for Tuesday’s start of baseball’s annual general managers’ meetings in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The Athletic first reported the agreement.
Bendix will take over the department previously overseen by Kim Ng, who had been general manager of the Marlins for the last three seasons. Ng elected to leave the team last month after she and Marlins owner Bruce Sherman evidently could not agree on the structure of the department going forward; the Marlins had exercised a contract option to keep Ng in 2024, but Ng declined.
Bendix spent 15 seasons with the Rays, starting as an intern and getting promoted to senior vice president of baseball operations and general manager in December 2021.
The 38-year-old Bendix moved up the Rays’ ladder briskly: after his time as an intern, he became assistant of baseball operations, coordinator of baseball research and development, and director of baseball development – eventually becoming vice president of that department before getting promoted to the GM role.
Before his promotion to his current role, he spent six seasons leading the baseball development department and served as vice president of baseball development from 2020-21.
And he was part of a consistent winner: Tampa Bay has made the playoffs in each of the last five seasons — it lost a wild-card series this year to eventual World Series champion Texas — and have baseball’s fourth-best regular-season record over that span, behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston and Atlanta.
The Rays did all that with a payroll that consistently ranks in the bottom third on the 30-team MLB list, with many teams spending $100 million more — sometimes much more — than Tampa Bay does on players each year.
He’ll be asked to do much of the same in Miami, another team that isn’t among the big-spenders but that made the wild-card round of this year’s playoffs under first-year manager Skip Schumaker. The Marlins lost that series to Philadelphia.
The Marlins have batting champion Luis Arraez coming back next season along with first baseman Josh Bell — who exercised his $16.5 million option — but will be without ace right-hander Sandy Alcantara, who will miss 2024 because of surgery on his elbow.
