Dave Hyde: To replicate Tampa Bay’s success, Marlins go right to the source in hiring Bendix

MIAMI — In an offseason of big decisions, the biggest one explains itself, and you don’t need to read the baseball research paper Peter Bendix wrote in college to understand why.

The Miami Marlins want to be the Miami Marlins-Rays.

So, they hired Bendix, the Tampa Bay Rays’ general manager, to get them there.

That’s it. That’s the central thought behind team owner Bruce Sherman motioning to Bendix inside loanDepot park on Monday and saying, “We couldn’t be happier with the direction we’re going.”

Everyone looks good coming in the door. You don’t have to know Bendix to understand why he’s the Marlins latest hope as president of baseball operations. You just have to know where he’s from.

Tampa is the patron saint of small-market teams. The Marlins have failed to build a sustainable model under Derek Jeter or Jeffrey Loria, and Sherman didn’t think previous general manager Kim Ng was the best choice to build out the larger organization.

Sherman went direct to the source. Tampa has similar financial and fan challenges as the Marlins yet has made the playoffs the past five years and 10 of the previous 17 seasons. It has a model under Bendix’s former boss, Eric Neander, that becomes the Marlins model.

Draft your own players. Fleece teams in trades. Introduce new concepts like relievers as starters and defensive shifts (now banned) for any marginal advantage. And succeed on the small-market budget in a game that squeezes such franchises into revolving irrelevance.

“Tampa averaged the 29th-highest payroll for about a decade or more and they have the third-most wins,’’ Sherman said. “That’s off the charts on any statistical analysis and it’s kind of amazing. Whatever secret sauce he has — and I’m sure there are many of them — he’s not about to say them publicly, but hopefully he will bring that to this organization over multiple years.”

As Bendix said, the plan is to “take some of those lessons and make my own brand here in Miami.”

He was a Tampa lifer, an up-from-the-bottom achiever, a college kid who brought a research paper he wrote at Tufts to the interview for a Tampa front-office internship in 2008. He doesn’t remember what it was about, but remembers the reaction from Tampa Bay executive James Click.

“I’ve already read it,’’ he said.

He got the job and started rising in the organization with background centered in analytics. Think of the wonky Jonah Hill character in “Moneyball” and you’re close to the first impression.

Bendix also watched Tampa’s front-office pipeline begin, to the point four former Rays now run major league teams. It’s five, if you include Click, who was the Houston Astros’ general manager for a couple of World Series trips before moving to Toronto this past season as its “vice president of baseball strategy.”

Creative titles and remapped responsibilities are part of the Rays Way. Some former executives have succeeded, like Andrew Friedman, the originator of their success, with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Some haven’t, like Chaim Bloom, who was recently fired from the Boston Red Sox.

Milwaukee’s Matt Arnold, who has built a contending team, is a closer fit to the Marlins. But the Rays are a parallel idea to what the Marlins must do. They’ve drafted well enough to keep a constant flow of young players coming up — something Jeter’s Marlins failed miserably in doing.

The Marlins made the playoffs this past season, but it was last in runs scored, second-to-last in defense and average in pitching. That’s not sustainable, not when there are no hitters coming up from the minors.

Is the problem drafting? Developing? That’s what the next guy has to solve.

“There’s so many ways to acquire players,’’ Bendix said. “Everyone in the organization needs to be aligned, everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction. Those things are amplified when you have multiple areas in multiple departments when they’re all aligned, all with the same goal.”

This gets into the Rays Way. It involves a heavy dose of analytics —the Rays’ director of analytics became a bench coach a few years back — but also an open environment, “in which players are allowed to be themselves,’’ Bendix said.

“They are given what they need to succeed, whether that’s encouragement, whether that’s a kick in the pants, whether that’s specific data, whether that’s getting out of the way,’’ he said.

All that sounds good, but it doesn’t immediately replace the 36 home runs Jorge Soler took to free agency or the fact ace Sandy Alcantara won’t be healthy all next season.

“Ultimately,’’ Bendix said, “good players win baseball games.”

Ultimately, a good executive is needed to produce good players. Bendix was in such a good place in Tampa that he initially dismissed joining the Marlins.

“My first reaction is, ‘I’m good where I am,’ ’’ he said.

Now his job is to re-create what Tampa has. The Marlins have tried this before and failed. This time, they went right to the source in hiring Bendix.