One thing I laughed at last night was Harold Reynolds saying that the Marlins’ success disproved the idea that you shouldn’t draft high school pitchers (gee, who do you think he was talking about?), given that Josh Beckett, Brad Penny and Dontrelle Willis were all drafted out of high school. Of course, this might be a more salient critique if the Marlins had actually drafted all three of these guys, but instead they got Willis in the Matt Clement trade and Penny in the Matt Mantei deal. Nobody ever said picking up prospects who had already had some minor league success was unusually risky just because they had been drafted out of high school.
No, for once I think Phil Rogers is right: you can’t really draw any broad lessons from the Marlins. A few small lessons, perhaps — I may take a look at some of those — but the bottom line is that this was a pretty good team that got hot and got lucky at just the right time.