A familiar executive lured the star closer to South Beach. Discover how one Pete influenced another's winning gamble with the Miami Marlins.
For most of the time Pete Fairbanks has been living in Florida, the Miami Marlins have been awful.
Yes, the Marlins made the playoffs twice between 2019 and 2025.
But it must be said that the first playoff berth happened in the COVID-themed 2020 season, where the fish made it at 31-29.
Three years later, Miami played well enough to make the playoffs in a traditional 162-game season.
But that Marlins teams was more or less average at 84-78, and their playoff run lasted all of two losses to the Philadelphia Phillies.
Here’s what the Marlins have done in the rest of the 2020s:
2021: 67-95
2022: 69-93
2024: 62-100
2025: 79-83
The good news for the Marlins is that last season was far better than the season before that, and that’s a big reason why Fairbanks picked Miami after the Tampa Bay Rays declined his option.
"The Bendix-era Marlin teams are definitely better than when we faced them in 2021 or 2022,” Fairbanks told reporters via Zoom earlier this week, “so I definitely think that things are heading in the right direction.
“Bendix,” of course, is team president Peter Bendix, who previously had been Fairbanks’ GM with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Miami struggled in Bendix’s first season, but improved by 17 wins last year, and getting a guy like Fairbanks could go a long way toward getting Miami back to the playoffs.
Fairbanks was one of the best closers in baseball in 2025, saving 27 games and posting a 2.83 ERA.
Now, times are changing in South Beach.
"To hear all the things that he's been doing over his tenure down in Miami, from what I've heard previously to what I have now, how much things are changing and how much he has been attempting to put his stamp on things,” Fairbanks said. “I felt like that made it a pretty easy choice, and I am excited to see the direction that he takes."
When Bendix joined that Marlins in January 2024, he outlined his vision for making Miami a winner.
“You're bringing in the best players, you're exposing them to the best coaches, the best technology, the best training methods,” Bendix said. “Those two things compound on one another. And then at the Major League level, you're making consistent decisions with a long-term picture in mind, such that you're always thinking about both the present and the future.
“When all of those things are working in harmony … you really get this multiplicative effect where the organization becomes more than the sum of its parts.”