How Bendix plans to put his own spin on Marlins

New Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix recently sat down with MLB.com for an exclusive interview to discuss everything from his vision for the organization to his favorite TV shows (“Breaking Bad,” “The Wire,” and “Better Call Saul”).

This is the first installment of a three-part series. Check out Part Two and Part Three.

MIAMI -- To understand what motivates Peter Bendix, dig beneath the surface and observe his roots.

Decades before serving in the front office of the underdog Rays and now as president of baseball operations with the Marlins, he was a suburban Cleveland first grader with hopes of his hometown team capturing an elusive World Series title.

Bendix was a good student growing up, but he wasn’t mathematically inclined. That changed as an upperclassman at Cleveland Heights High School, around the time “Moneyball” came out and Cleveland began a rebuild after years of falling short. Bendix started to follow prospects and analyze why decisions were made by the front office.

But Bendix didn’t know what career to pursue until attending Tufts University, where he would write a research paper on whether pitchers were better after the tutelage of then-Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone (conclusion: they were). Another study tried to account for batted-ball luck.

Out of school, Bendix spent the first two of his 15 years with the Rays as an intern. He watched the likes of Andrew Friedman and Erik Neander earn buy-in from others in the organization and tackle problems. Never one to shy away from asking questions, Bendix learned to value collaboration, authenticity, humility, kindness and logic.

“I had the opportunity to work with people that become family, trying to beat an unbeatable game,” Bendix said. “Both in terms of 'no one can ever beat baseball,' and there's a David versus Goliath part of me. That probably was instilled in me in Cleveland. That's probably part of my internal identity and honed in Tampa Bay, and something that I still feel here.

“It’s part of the fun, knowing that we are going to be competing against teams with more resources every year, against teams in New York and Philadelphia and just everywhere -- bigger markets, more resources, all these different things in an industry without a salary cap, and an industry in which payroll should determine success. But it doesn't. And being on the side of the little guy in a lot of different ways is ingrained in my personality and part of the fight.”

Now 38, it’s time for Bendix to put his own spin on the Marlins. His experience has laid the foundation for where he is today, and the type of organization he wants to build in Miami.

“We need to be excellent in every component of baseball operations,” Bendix said. “We need to have an excellent international department, we need to have an excellent amateur department, pro department, research department, sports science department, player development. Every component of player acquisition and player development needs to be excellent. When all of those things happen, you get a compounding effect.

“You're bringing in the best players, you're exposing them to the best coaches, the best technology, the best training methods. 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.”

Bendix began that process with the hirings of Gabe Kapler (assistant general manager), Vinesh Kanthan (director of baseball operations) and Rachel Balkovec (director of player development). His priority is building out departments to lay the groundwork for the organization, but his favorite part of the job is roster building.

The goal is to eliminate the concept of a competitive window, the idea that teams go through winning and losing cycles over the span of years. Few organizations have been able to achieve that type of sustainable success, and it is becoming even more difficult to do so as more teams think alike. So Bendix hopes to put in place people who can envision the next frontier of baseball, much like Tampa Bay did with the usage of openers, for an on-field edge.

As Bendix orchestrates his vision, he inherits an organization that is coming off a postseason appearance, with most of the roster slated to return. But he also faces the challenge of stabilizing the amateur and player development departments. The farm system has dropped in the rankings and has not seen enough homegrown position players flourish in the Majors.

Asked for his takeaways from all this, Bendix begins by assuring fans there is a long-term plan in place. He emphasizes the importance of being disciplined in his decision-making. He cannot chase short-term highs; he must stay true and stick with the process.

“I think to build the organization that we want to build, it won't happen overnight and it won't happen in a smooth linear fashion,” Bendix said. “That's not how organizations achieve sustainable success. The way it does happen is by keeping an eye on what our end goal is, of building that organization into a place where we can be successful year in and year out, and knowing that it takes decisions that are meant to pay off in the long term to get there.

“So what we're going to be doing is, we're going to constantly be making these decisions that we know are going to take a little bit of time to pay off. But in doing so, we're not cutting things from this year. We're not trying to take a step back, we're not trying to rebuild. We're trying to come in and say, ‘What can we do to help this year's team while also investing for the future?’ We all want to constantly be investing into the future, always. There's never a point that we won't be investing into the future. You can invest into the current and the future at the same time.”