Fredi Gonzalez took a young, inconsistent team with a $36 million payroll and won 87 games during the 2009 season, good for second place in the National League East.

His reward? Florida Marlins officials reportedly talked with Howard Johnson about a position with the organization and rumors are spreading that Gonzalez may be fired.

Owner Jeffrey Loria, a frequent target of Brushbackpitch.com for being the cheapest owner in Major League Baseball, actually believes this team underachieved, according to SportsIllustrated.com’s Jon Heyman.

“We don’t talk about rumors; we never have,” team President David Samson reportedly told reporters after the game, according to a story at the team’s MLB.com site. “The answer is after every season we always evaluate everyone, so that is normal. We’re all disappointed. Certainly, winning 87 or 88 games is a positive for the organization, but our goal every year is to make the playoffs. That’s that. Rumors come out all the time this time of year about all sorts of things. From our perspective, there is nothing different about this year than the 10 others I’ve had in baseball.”

The team’s goal might be making the playoffs. But when you’ve go into the season expecting to have a centerfielder competing for rookie of the year (Cameron Maybin) and he flops mightily; when you have a leadoff hitter start the season with 14 hits, a homer, and nine runs in the season’s first five games only to see him finish with a .269 average and a .306 on-base percentage (Emilio Bonifacio); when Jeremy Hermida gets 429 at-bats when he has proven to be a part-time player; and most importantly when team ownership, year after year after year, trades almost anyone approaching arbitration (see previous BBP posts on the team trading Scott Olsen, Josh Willingham, Mike Jacobs, Kevin Gregg, et al) – yes, when all of these things happen before and during one season, team ownership should be thrilled with 87 wins.

But no. Loria wants to spend south of $40 million on player contracts, despite receiving nearly two-thirds of that amount in revenue sharing alone and he wants his manager to take a team full of rookies and Major League misfits to the playoffs.

Is Howard Johnson going to win more than 87 games with this bunch?

Then again, Loria has a history of this kind of move. After an 11-31 start in 2006, Joe Girardi led the Marlins back into the outer realm of the Wild Card hunt before the team finished 78-84 with the youngest and, yes, once again lowest paid team in the league.

Girardi was named manager of the year that year. But he reportedly didn’t get along with Loria, so the owner canned him. How did that turn out?

Well, put Girardi on the highest-paid team this season and he led the Yankees to a 103 win season. Now, granted, ownership bought him a pretty nice hand to play during the offseason. But Girardi, nonetheless, is a skilled manager.

Fredi Gonzalez appears to be a skilled manager as well. He overachieved with this collection of talent. If this group is kept together (yeah, right) there are plenty of young guns that could develop into the playoff team Loria wants to see. But if Gonzalez pays the price for only winning 87 games this year by losing his job it will be the biggest screw job since who knows when.

But it looks like there’s a good chance that Gonzalez will follow Girardi out the door.

Loria, look in the mirror. The person you should be firing is yourself.