Some baseball owners like Steve Cohen of the Mets blatantly react to what the other team in town does. He can’t help but compare the number of stories written about his Mets and the Yankees. Forget about the new scheduling, the Mets and Yankees have been rivals for years.

I think fans and the media like to think that their owner and front office care as much about beating the other team in town. While they might not be verbally duking it out with their counterparts, their fans are.

After writing about the expansion, 1998 Devil Rays yesterday, I wondered how much the Marlins early success figured in their roster construction and plans for development. The Florida Marlins won the 1997 World Series-only four years after they joined the league in 1993.

I think there are enough similarities between expansion, first season rosters and of those teams conducting teardowns/rebuilds that often resemble tank jobs. As it was happening, I often likened the Cubs rosters from 2011-2014 to be little more than expansion rosters. While there might have been a few players the Cubs drafted and had high hopes for, the roster was mostly filled with veteran placeholders-guys that wouldn’t embarrass themselves too much while losing just enough to get better draft slots.

Obviously, there are a number of ways to build a team-be it through the expansion draft, where you are forced to draft veterans or building through the amateur draft-supplemented through shrewd trading and free agency.

The ’97 Marlins had a surprising number of homegrown talent, guys that they drafted and developed-most of whom played at Kane County between 1993-96. The Marlins famously also dabbled heavily in the free agent market and then dumped salary immediately.

Not every champ that came up through the system was a big name, but the quantity is pretty impressive. Here are a few original Marlins on that first championship team: Charles Johnson, Luis Castillo, Edgar Renteria, Todd Dunwoody, Mark Kotsay, Billy McMillon, Ralph Milliard, Tony Saunders, Felix Heredia and Antonio Alfonseca.

At the very least, the Devil Rays front office had to have been award of the Marlins roster construction. Such that Saunders was on that first Devil Rays roster. Despite all of their organizational successes, the Rays have yet to win their first World Series and the Marlins have won two titles.

In the past decade several teams have sought to tear it down and rebuild, even if they haven’t explicitly said so to their fans. Some teams aren’t as transparent as others, maybe when they fail, they can disavow any knowledge of a rebuild.

Teams in every professional league tank (no matter what the league thinks) with the hope of getting higher draft picks. What teams do with those better picks separates the winners from the losers. How quickly and thoroughly does a team develop their players.