NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Recent front-office hires Vinesh Kanthan and Gabe Kapler are part of the Marlins' brain trust at the Winter Meetings at the Gaylord Opryland Resort this week.

Last Tuesday, Miami named Kanthan as its director of baseball operations. He will report to the assistant general managers.

Kanthan spent the past five seasons with the Rangers (2019-23), most recently as assistant director of baseball operations for the reigning World Series champions. During his time in the organization, he also held roles in sports science and analytics. Before Texas, Kanthan was with Tampa Bay for two seasons ('17-18), overlapping with Miami's new president of baseball operations Peter Bendix.

In his role with the Marlins, Kanthan will be involved in all aspects of baseball operations, with a focus on Major League operations and interdepartmental collaboration.

"Vinesh can do a lot of different things, and the director of baseball operations role means a lot of different things for different teams," Bendix said on Day 1 of the Winter Meetings. "But for us, he's going to work across a lot of departments. He's going to kind of bring things together, be a bit of a project manager, a bit of a jack of all trades, and he's a great communicator. He's a great teammate, and he's got a lot of fresh, good ideas."

Last Friday, the Marlins hired Kapler as an assistant general manager.

Kapler, who managed the Phillies (2018-19) and Giants ('20-23) following a 12-year MLB playing career, also served as the Dodgers' director of player development from '14-17. After leading San Francisco to a franchise-record 107 wins during a National League Manager of the Year campaign in '21, Kapler was dismissed on Sept. 29 when the club missed out on the postseason for the second straight year.

According to a source, the 48-year-old Kapler wanted to return to the front office and was a top candidate for the Red Sox job. He will be involved in all aspects of the Marlins' baseball operations department.

"He has a tremendous wealth of experience and knowledge [as a] player, coach, manager, farm director," Bendix said. "Very difficult to find all those things in one person, but as I started to get to know Gabe, the person that he is, the ideas that he has, the care that he has for people, and really getting to know people, support people, help them develop, it aligned perfectly with what my vision is."