Beinfest discusses latest round of Marlins trades

ATLANTA -- Here is what President of Baseball Operations Larry Beinfest had to say after Tuesday's trades: 

Opening comments... “Again, our disappointment with the team continues. As part of the restructuring that began last week in earnest with the Detroit and Los Angeles trade, we’ve been on the phone exploring a number of different things that really brought us right to the deadline.

“We were able to get two separate deals done today that we’ve been working on for the better part of a week once we exited it out of the two deals last week.

“First deal was Edward Mujica to the Cardinals for Zack Cox, highly touted third baseman was a draft pick in 2010, accomplished player at the University of Arkansas. We really like the bat. We’re going to send him to Jacksonville. He’s moved through the Cardinals’ system very quickly. Third base is an area of need for us. We thought it lined up. We love the bat, a left-handed hitting third baseman. A guy we know well obviously spring training with the Cardinals. We’ve seen him in spring training and our scouting people knew him very well out of the draft and thought very highly of him.”

"In terms of moving Edward, he’s done a good job for us. It’s an area of some depth now with Big Z in the bullpen and prospects like Even Reed and A.J. Ramos and Hatcher ready to go. It was an area we felt like we had some depth to make the move.

"The second deal with Gaby, Gaby did a great job here. What’s going on the past year with him offensively is something that’s been baffling to him and baffling to us. He struggled. Having to send him to the minor leagues this year was difficult on two separate occasions. This may be a good opportunity for him to get a fresh start.

"We’re going to get Gorkys Hernandez, a fleet-footed outfielder, can play center field. We’re going to take a look at him out in center field. Defensively we have him well above average. This is a guy again that has upside, does not have a lot of experience in the major leagues. We’re looking to provide that opportunity for him to show us what he can do. Ruggiano will move to a corner and hopefully we’ll get Giancarlo back as early as next week and move on.

"A big part of this is the competitive balance pick. It is the second pick following the first round. We’ve been involved now in a couple of these things. These are very valuable assets. To have access to the 33rd pick in the country is a very big deal.

"Gorkys is a young player we’re going to take a look at and we’ve liked for quite some time all the way back to his days with the Tigers and the Braves.

"That’s how we finished things up. Now we’ll go through the post-waiver deadline and hopefully start to improve on the field and win some games, and take a look at some of the assets we’ve accumulated in the last 10 days."

On how close the Marlins came to making other trades... “You never really know until they’re done. There are so many moving parts and so many teams are talking to multiple teams. I don’t know that you know exactly where you stands. I think trades in general build momentum and you get a good feel if you’re close, but it’s hard to identify. I know you’re looking for something big that may or may not have been close. We had some things percolating. It didn’t happen. Again, I’m not sure the momentum was there any way for things to come to fruition.

“These two deals, we had a pretty good feeling when we got to the office this morning there was a chance these two things could happen.”

On if Logan Morrison's future is at first base... “His future is hopefully back on a baseball field. Obviously the DL is not the goal. We’ve always known LoMo can play first. He’s very good at first. That’s where he came up. We had Gaby and subsequently Carlos Lee over at first base. Let’s get LoMo healthy. I think first base is a reasonable outlook for 2013, but we’ll see. Things can change, etc. The priority is to get the knee healthy, get him back on the field, have him not be a .230 hitter because he’s not a .230 hitter and go from there. It’s reasonable to speculate he could at first base.”

On how quickly Cox could become a factor at third base for the Marlins... “He’s kind of rocketed through the St. Louis system and I guess that’s a good thing. He’s had two injuries of late. One was he got hit in the head by a pitch and had a concussion in late May. Recently he had a mild hamstring strain which landed him on the minor league DL and caused him to miss some time. I don’t think we have a good answer for that. This guy is an offensive performer. Having not seen him a lot of late because of the injuries, I can’t really speak to how close he is, but this guy is in our view and this trade was made with the thought he could be our third baseman in the near future. We just need to get him on the field and we’ll have a better idea of the time table."