This is not about the Mets, who endured what seemed like three years' worth of injuries in 2009, and whose farm system is better than credited. It is about the Marlins and their seven-year record vis-à-vis their divisional rivals in New York, not to mention the Braves and the fact that Florida has finished ahead of Atlanta in each of the past two seasons. This is about owner Jeffrey Loria's figuring out how to cope with a small market and -- until the past few months -- no hope of a real ballpark. He tied up one of the game's best general managers, Larry Beinfest, and his baseball board of directors -- Mike Hill, Dan Jennings, Jim Fleming, Stan Meek et al -- to long-term contracts and enabled them to use scouting and development to try to consistently compete with big-market teams. The Marlins have had the lowest payroll in the National League in each of the past four years; the $104 million for those four years was $45 million less than the Mets' 2009 payroll.And after Chris Coghlan won the 2009 NL Rookie of the Year, and as anyone who follows Florida starts thinking about how Logan Morrison and Mike Stanton could compete for the award the next couple of seasons, take a look at the Marlins' relative seven-year success:While you can go to the Marlins' Web site and see their new park peering up out of the Miami earth and they talk about the focus on its 2012 opening, the fact remains that they are coming off a season in which they finished second in a division with two of the five highest payrolls in baseball and truly believe it was, overall, a disappointing year. Hanley Ramirez should probably be runner-up to Albert Pujols in the MVP. Josh Johnson is now in the elite starter category. Chris Coghlan is their third rookie of the year in seven years; most significant, he is their first who's homegrown (Dontrelle Willis came from the Cubs and Ramirez from Boston). Now, once again Beinfest & Co. have to weave some fiscal magic. Jeremy Hermida and his $2.5M-plus salary have been moved on to Boston. Dan Uggla, whose arbitration numbers will jump off his $5.35M award from February, will be traded. Reliever Kiko Calero (60 IP, 36 H, 69 K) is on the free-agent market and may be gone.But if Emilio Bonifacio can play second base and improve his .303 on-base percentage, the Marlins pretty much know who and what they are going to be in 2010. Cody Ross(.270, 24 HR), Cameron Maybin and Coghlan are going to be the outfield -- unless Stanton or Arizona Fall League light Bryan Petersen makes a spring leap and Coghlan moves in to second. Jorge Cantu will be at third, Ramirez at short, and first base will come down to Morrison (whose .411 on-base percentage in Double-A was impressive coming off a hand injury after being MVP for both Florida State and the AFL) or Gaby Sanchez. Are the Marlins the Phillies? No, but in the NL East, they still won 87 games and finished ahead of everyone but Philadelphia. And their pitching can be much better than it was, one reason Randy St. Claire was imported as pitching coach. Johnson is a given, 15-5 and Cy Young material. But after so much promise exhibited in 2008, their starters regressed to a 4.57 ERA and less quality starts than every team except the Astros, Brewers and Nationals. The Marlins strongly believe that Ricky Nolasco will be more consistent than the form that got him sent back to the minors and totaled a 5.06 ERA, and that Chris Volstad is better than 9-13, 5.21. They need more than 16 starts from Anibal Sanchez, and they see a good future for Sean West.Then there's Andrew Miller, who on paper seems a disappointment -- 14 starts, a 4.84 ERA. He struggled with aligning his delivery more directly to home plate, and continued some of the inconsistencies in the Arizona Fall League."People forget how young Miller is [24]," says Beinfest. "The talent and stuff are there, no doubt about it. I really believe he is a victim of being rushed to the big leagues [in his first full pro season out of North Carolina], and he hasn't yet regained the confidence he had in college. He had the knee problem. He got rushed. He's tried to make adjustments in his delivery. He hasn't settled into a situation where he can regain that confidence."Last season, Miller started two games in the Gulf Coast League, one in the Florida State League, three in the International League, 14 in the big leagues. He had three strong starts in June, then the wheels came off. But if he puts it back together, with Johnson, Nolasco et al, the Marlins can present one of the league's best rotations.They have anointed Leo Nunez closer, and hope to add a veteran or two to go with Brian Sanches, Dan Meyer and Matt Lindstrom.The Marlins are a lesson for the Mets, but, then again, so are the self-developed Phillies and Braves. The Marlins don't worry about talk radio or back pages or the blogosphere; they concern themselves with scouting, development and the judgment of a baseball board of directors with a solid history. One never hears Beinfest whine about his market or his payroll. He moves forward and awaits the arrival of Morrison and Stanton and Peterson, and he does so with the consent of Loria.One general manager calls the Marlins "the Outliers," and they may be. Do they do everything right? Of course not; they wish they'd taken Jason Heyward instead of Matt Dominguez, but then Heyward lasted halfway through the first round that year. But in this half-decade of the widening gulf between the smart large-market teams that have figured out all the scouting, development and coaching layers their revenues can fund and the small markets further squeezed by the economy, what has happened in South Florida remains an anomaly.It's bad enough to have the Yankees and Phillies staring at them, but the fact remains that in the last seven years the Mets have won fewer games and had fewer winning seasons than the Marlins. And that in 2008 and 2009 the Braves won fewer games than the Marlins.They are Warren Buffett's kind of team. Run right.