If I Were To Collect: Florida/Miami Marlins Edition

[The seventeenth in a series:  I’m picking one player that I associate with a team (whether they spent the majority of their career there or not) that I would strongly consider adding to my official want lists.  They may not always be superstars, or the most popular, and honestly they may not always be my favorite player from the team, but that’s what will make this fun, no?]

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so why not give it a shot.  In previous seasons, I would try to tie the featured team to the Cubs schedule, but there are no previously unfeatured teams for some time.  With that in mind, I probably should have picked an AL team, but this one had all the scans waiting already.

A card as gaudy as their stadium

My pick for the Florida/Miami Marlins is Giancarlo Stanton, and it’s not even close.  He’s one of the only players I actually know on the team, and he can mash some taters.  Being a big time power hitter usually comes with inflated card prices, but he’s on a less than great team, with a much less than great fan base overall, which means he would be pretty easy to collect as well.  Heck, I might even collect that Mike Stanton guy, too.

This looks far too out of focus for a scan

Current player runner-up: Jose Fernandez

He seems like he’s going to be a pretty good pitcher, but the jury is still out.  That’s largely due to an injury derailment, but most likely Jose will make another team very happy some day after a future trade deadline.

The closest I could find of him as a Marlin

Retired player runner-up: Cliff Floyd

There really aren’t too many decent retired Marlins to choose from.  Also, there’s bad blood with the 2003 team, so I’m not touching that group.  Cliff was a Cub for one season, and he also spent time as a Marlin prior to that season that shall not be mentioned (even though I did already).  Then there’s the added bonus of him breaking into the MLB as a member of the Montreal Expos, so I would get to collect more Expos cards.

The Series So Far
Angels – (tie) Jim Abbott & Vladimir Guerrero
Astros
Athletics
Blue Jays
Braves – Steve Avery
Brewers – Bob Eucker
Cardinals – Jim Edmonds
Cubs
Diamondbacks – Randy Johnson
Dodgers – Jackie Robinson
Giants
Indians – Jim Thome
Mariners
Marlins – Giancarlo Stanton
Mets – (tie) Darryl Strawberry & Dwight Gooden
Nationals/Expos
Orioles – Adam Jones
Padres
Phillies – Mike Schmidt
Pirates –  Andrew McCutchen
Rangers – Nolan Ryan
Rays/Devil Rays
Red Sox
Reds – Eric Davis
Rockies – Carlos Gonzalez
Royals
Tigers – Alan Trammell
Twins
White Sox – Paul Konerko
Yankees