There seems a growing perception in certain segments of the national media, heading into the 2014 season, that as a result of the November 2012 blockbuster deal with the Blue Jays, the Marlins are headed in the right direction and will be contenders for years to come, while Toronto is doomed to last place in the tough AL East.

It’s a premise worthy of discussion.

In a column last week on Foxsports.com, Jon Morosi suggested the Marlins’ victory total over the three next years is guaranteed to be better than the Jays. The reason given is that the Marlins are six-deep in starting arms — so deep, in fact, that they are one of the few teams able to offer a young starter in a trade.

But hey, didn’t the Jays prove last spring that six starters on the depth chart can’t really be labeled as depth? Major-league teams need to go 10 starters deep before the season ends. You don’t trade one of your solid starters if you’re just counting on six.

The six starry Marlins starters are RH Jose Fernandez, 21, RH Nathan Eovaldi, 24, RH Henderson Alvarez, 23, RH Jacob Turner, 22, LH Brad Hand, 24, and RH Tom Koehler, 27. Yes, they have impressive arms, but the Marlins’ six starters have just 204 combined major-league starts, with a lifetime won-lost record of 48-85.

That’s not enough experience or success when handling late-season pressure in a pennant race.

And what about the iffy Fish offence? The Marlins are admittedly playing in a division that is not as deep as the AL East, but when making an evaluation, remember that in 2013, Miami finished last in the league in batting average, runs scored, on-base percentage and slugging. Giancarlo Stanton is the only star among position players.

But the bottom-line reason that this Marlins group in the next three seasons will not win more games than the Jays is the history of the Miami ownership group headed by Jeffrey Loria and David Samson.

They distrust the media, disrespect the fans and manipulate various levels of government. Plus, there are players and agents that — after the trade with the Jays that sent Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle away after one year of long-term deals — won’t trust them again. We know the fans won’t.

Recall that Samson, the club president, was earlier this yearthe first competitor voted off Survivor earlier this year. In his application to be a contestant, as reported in his official biography by the show’s producers, he suggested that one of his claims to fame was “getting the local government in South Florida to contribute over $350 million to a new baseball park during the recession.”

That sleight-of-hand accomplishment, of course, once ownership had the new baseball stadium constructed largely at taxpayers’ expense, was what really led to the blockbuster trade with the Blue Jays. They could lose games without paying over $100 million in player salaries and call it smart.

Loria and Samson honestly believed heading into 2012 that they had put together a winning team to correspond with the first year of the new ballpark. Then when it became clear it wasn’t going to happen, they started to dump salary. They had the stadium they wanted, now they could dismantle and claim the plan was always to build a winner with young talent.

The fact is when you think you’re smarter than anybody else, you tend to blame others for failure.

Here are the caveats in buying into the 2014 playoff dreams of the Fish and dismissing the Jays. The Miami farm system is rated 27th overall by Baseball America. The Jays’ farm is 15th and on the rise. By the end of 2014, a crop of young Jays’ prospects is expected to have revealed themselves.

The Marlins have shown no sustainability, despite World Series titles in 1997 and 2003. Once those teams won, they were done. Since current Loria ownership took over the team in 2002, their best three-consecutive-season runs in terms of total victories have been 267 from 2003-05, 253 from 2002-04 and 251 wins from 2008-10. No other three-year stretch has produced a winning record for the Marlins. The win total has decreased every season from 2009-13, from 87 to 80 to 72 to 69 to 62.

The Marlins seem to be selling to fans that they had a 2013 rookie-of-the-year in Fernandez — who skipped Double and Triple-A and went right to the majors — so why can’t they do it again with those other 23 and 24-year-old youngsters in the rotation? History says it’s not that easy.

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The Marlins, because of the Jays falling on their faces last year, should be given the immediate edge in judging the outcome of that trade on Nov. 18, 2012.

But, one year later, is the evidence enough to declare them a contender and winners for the strategy of dumping salary? No.