The Swede

I wouldn't worry about Conine. Encarnacion won't get another hit for 10 games. Conine will be in there in no time.

The O's running out of pitchers was simply brilliant. At least it wasn't as dumb as trading one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball for a mediocre right-handed reliever. :plain 721331[/snapback] What trade are you talking about?

okay..so he went back to his original delivery..how is one hit bad? 718783[/snapback] His point has nothing to do with Burnetts performance -- just Burnetts inability to improve due to his own stubborn, arrogant, self If his flawed delivery is the reason for his arm troubles -- how is he every going to fullfill his potential? Every time he takes a step forward on the field -- he takes two steps back because of an arm problem. He claims he wants to be comforatable -- I wonder how comforatable he's going to be when they're opening up his elbow again. Hopefully I'm wrong...but I've seen it too many times where bad mechanics lead to SERIOUS arm problems...and I think this is the reason why the Marlins were willing to move Burnett this offseason and rather invest serious money into someone else(Hudson, Vazquez...etc) 718803[/snapback] I don't know if Burnett necessarily has a flawed delivery. Kevin Brown seemed to do fine with it. Also, I don't think it is reasonable to say that he has bad mechanics. Sure it's not a textbook delivery, but that does not mean that it is flawed.

Beckett - 3.20 ERA 16-6 Burnett - 3.50 ERA 16-8 Leiter - 4.50 ERA 11-13 Willis - 4.50 ERA 12-12 Valdez - 5.30 ERA 9-14 Pierre - .305 1HR 40RBI Castillo - .298 4HR 50RBI Cabrera - .295 35HR 110 RBI Delgado - .280 32HR 95 RBI Lowell - .288 27HR 90 RBI Lo Duca -.265 9HR 65RBI Conine - .260 12HR 65 RBI Gonzalez -.215 14HR 60 RBI 83-79 All-Stars: Cabrera, Beckett

I know Sanchez doesn't walk much and isn't the greatest defender, but I think he would be a great fit here. We need another centerfielder and is insurance in case Pierre wants too much next here. He has proven that he can hit, and he fits in with our offensive concept. I think he would be a great addition. Not to cause an uproar, but maybe we can trade Pierre for a pitcher.

I actually didn't think that Valdez looked that bad, and I really hate Valdez. I am not sure what TSwift is talking about because he threw some nice curveballs. His fastball is always flat, so that wasn't surprising. He seemed to have acceptable command and control. The Twins made some solid contact but nothing for extra bases: no long home runs or solid doubles. I don't believe he walked anyone. Also, the Twins swung through a couple fastballs, which is a good sign. He didn't throw too many changeups though. Overall, for his first or second start, I thought he looked fine. Stokes looked pathetic. Struck out on three pitches in his first at bat and 6 pitches in second. I thought that Hermida looked ok. He got under one pitch a little and it went to the warning track. Also, not to be nitpicking, but I don't think that Willis was going over pitches. Hagerty was keeping pitch charts; Willis was just sitting there.

This article suggests that the Marlins are getting around $57 million from the league/tv deals. That is almost enough to cover our entire payroll without selling tickets/merchandise/licensing and the normal sources of revenue for a team. We were paying for a about a $50 million payroll w/o this revenue sharing and tv deals two years ago. I was just wondering if our payroll shouldn't be closer to $80. With that kind of subsidizing, we should have been able to resign pavano and sign delgado. But with that said, I don't know if I trust this article and that $57 million figure.

"Revenue Sharing Unlike the NFL, baseball might not share all of its revenue. But the 300 million bucks a year it does share now are having a major effect. Anybody think the Marlins would be a prospective NL East favorite without the $27 million in revenue-sharing dollars they'll get this year? Think the Twins would be the AL Central favorites without the $21 million they'll get? The A's, according to sources, will get about $19 million. The Tigers: $17 million. The Reds: $15 million. The Padres: $8 million. The Rangers: $8 million. And that doesn't even include the $20 million or so each team collects in national TV money. Or the $4 million they're about to get from the new XM radio deal. Or the $6 million to $8 million each team gets from the swelling central fund. So you have some clubs taking in close to $50 million these days before they ever sell a ticket. And the only teams that are really hopeless are the clubs that won't plow all their MLB welfare money into payroll. The Devil Rays, for instance, are believed to be receiving $30 million in revenue sharing alone ? and will barely even use all of that on their major-league salaries. That's their fault, not the system's fault." From: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stor...yson&id=2010302 Are the Marlins spending all of their revenue sharing dollars on the payroll???

I don't mean to be a pessimist, but I see little reason why Encarnacion would breakout. He is not prospect-young anymore and has shown the extent of his skills. I think everyone is overrating his "5 tools." I, and no one else, has ever seen these five tools. When has he hit for average? and real power for that matter? Hitting 20 hrs in the juiced ball era with 600 abs is not impressive. Until he has the capability of judging the strikezone and getting around on major league fastballs, Encarnacion will continue to dissapoint. We made a smart move in getting rid of him last year and a huge mistake taking him back. I know everyone is optimistic about this season, and everyone wants the best for our players. But let's at least be slightly realistic. Encarnacion is and will continue to be one of the worst everyday right fielders in baseball, and we need to replace him (or not play him).

85-77; I just don't think we have the starting pitching anymore.

You gotta figure around 8 mil a year to sign AJ... then what? 3 mil for Bass.. so thats 11.. puts us aroun 63..? maybe enough money left over to get 1 more starter from FA then use one from in house? 678141[/snapback] I have a feeling that Bass will command more on the market than $3mil per anyway, Josh Wilson is waiting in the wings(as is Andino :confused ) 678158[/snapback] I would think $4 million would get it done. I wouldn't go much higher than that for the Bass. 678208[/snapback] I will be very upset if we waste $4 million on Gonzalez. I think Andino and Josh Wilson will be better, and for that matter, they are probably better now.

I think Damien Moss is a solid pitcher with some potential. Jeremi Gonzalez, on the other hand, is terrible.

You cannot argue with the statistics presented. Statistically, Lee and Pudge combined may be better than Delgado and Lo Duca. However, it is good to look at why the statistics are the way they are. The only reason that Lee and Pudge are ahead is that Lo Duca's mediocre hitting heavily brings down the combined Delgado-LoDuca average. Personally, I say hands down if you only consider these combinations on performance and not secondary factors (i.e. 1 set is cheaper and we wouldn't have had to give up other players etc.) Delgado and LoDuca are better. Lee and Pudge are nowhere near the hitters that Delgado is. I personally would rather have one stud and another mediocre guy because you can always scrap and find a cheap mediocre player to pair with Delgado. Delgado is significantly more valuable than Pudge and Lee. Pudge and Lee are not feared hitters that pitchers need to pitch around. Delgado changes a lineup. Besides, I was not unhappy to see Lee go. I think he was overrated and only an above average hitter. He cannot hit good pitching, and everyone knows how frustrating it was to watch him with guys on base. Simply, Lee is not a middle of the order hitter. Pudge is a nice hitter, but he is not a middle of the order guy either. For us, he had a very mediocre .297 16 hr and 85 RBI. Truth is that stars win in the playoffs and win the World Series, not a group of above-average guys. Baseball, though many believe it to be, is not about balance. No sport is. Many of you may be saying that the Marlins were a balanced team without stars in 2003, but a closer analysis shows differently. We won not because of Lee's slightly above-average play combined with a bunch of slightly above-average hitters like Encarnacion (at the time), Conine, Pierre, and Castillo. All those player were complementary. We won because Lowell was one of the ten or fifteen best hitters during the year when he wasn't injured; Cabrera flashed brilliance; and because Pudge had an insane playoffs in which he hit close to .400. (Though Pudge was impressive in the playoffs, he did not hit that way during the year and I attribute his playoffs to just Pudge hitting a peak in a player's up-and-down cycle of performance. Afterall, he had a mediocre year.) But if you look even closer, we didn't win because we hit and pitched well. We won very simply because Beckett was lights out and had one of the best playoff performances of any pitcher since Oral Hershiser in 1988. Actually, our starting pitcher was outstanding. Penny, Beckett, and Pavano threw 5 great games against the Yankees. We won because we were lopsided. We had the best starting pitching in the league at that point in the year. Teams with that cruise to a World Series. Perhaps a better example about the relative unimportance of balance and the importance of stars is the Heat. We weren't that good last year when we had 5 solid players on the court at all times. But now that we are essentially a 2 man team with a few, cheap, easily gotten, and easily replaced role players, the Heat is one of the best teams in basketball. Another example is the 2001 (?) Arizona Diamondbacks with R. Johnson and Schilling. For this reason, I think the Delgado-Loduca tandem is much better. Delgado is that stud player that will carry a team and Lo Duca is the easily replaced role player, whereas Pudge and LoDuca are the two slightly above-average tandem that are nice complementary players but are not the stars that win you a World Series (I can already see the posts saying that we did win a WS with them...please see two paragraphs above as to why we actually won). However, I feel ambivalent about having Delgado and Lo Duca on the Marlins because I thought that we had the lopsided talented stars needed to win on our pitching staff in Beckett, Penny, Pavano, and Burnett. They were all healthy and pitched together for only 4 innings last year. I think if you give them a full season of health and tweak the lineup adding another complementary but unspectacular hitter, the Marlins are a better team than they are now. Or at least a team built to win in the playoffs. Anyway, I apologize for ranting; I have just been stewing reading various articles and posts. Have a goodnight.

I don't understand why people think he would be a good closer. He's erratic, struggles to throw strikes consistently, and is not a swing-and-miss kind of pitcher. That is the exact opposite of what you need in a closer. Even though, I am strong supporter of the idea that any above-average pitcher would be a strong closer, I don't think Willis is above-average. Secondly, I read a few comments about how Willis is "so very talented." I don't think Willis is particularly talented. He has average stuff at best and struggles with command. He doesn't have an overpowering fastball; he doesn't have a lot of movement on his fastball; he has a below-average to average slider for a lefty without that sweeping motion; and an average changeup. I still think his future is as a starter because of the dearth of lefty starting pitchers who are even decent in the majors. He will be a good number 5 and average to solid number 4 on championship caliber teams. I could see him becoming a long-reliever only if he takes a significant step back with his command over the next two years.

News Flash: Brett Myers sucks!! Alot of people have this impression that hes an impact in that rotation, because of a 4.43 ERA in 2003, big wup, the guy is an average pitcher. 669053[/snapback] I like Brett Myers. You have to give the guy more of a chance to develop. He has nasty stuff, and is only 24 or 25. For now as a fifth starter he is fine, and if he learns to pitch some day, he will be really good. I think he needs to spend a year with the Braves and Leo. As for the general idea of this topic on national media, we need to remember that these national media guys don't know very much about most teams. They need to cover the high profile, high-budget teams because that is what most people want to read about. These guys watch the Yankees and the Red Sox games. They know next to nothing about small to mid market teams, like the Marlins. They base their opinions on a couple of hours of perusing numbers, other articles, and headline news. They may watch 5 Marlins games per year and use that very small sample size to talk about the team. I am not blaming them; it is the nature of their business. I just pay very little attention to their analysis.

Who? Who would you "invest" in? Who's out there? Would you suggest we should have invested in Kris Benson? Certainly not Pavano at what he signed for. Adding RBIs makes all pitchers better and it's cheaper. That said, great post. Alot of work went into it. 668649[/snapback] First off thank you for the compliment. I would have invested in Odalis Perez, Matt Clement, depending upon injury Wade Miller, possibly though not likely Millwood, considered signing Pavano for that much, and looked into trading for Vazquez w/o giving up Burnett. But overall that there were few stud starting pitchers this year shows how valuable of an asset we had with our starting pitcher last year and why we shouldn't have given up Penny. I would have invested in keeping Penny last year. There were guys on the market comparable to Lo Duca and Mota, but there really wasn't someone comparable to Penny who is a young still developing power pitcher who is not overpaid. It is very hard to get top-level starting pitching top to bottom, and the teams that have it win. Look at the teams like the Rangers who will not win until they get pitching, which they are really struggling to do w/o paying a high premium for only mediocre guys.

But Delgado and Lo Duca came at the cost of Penny. So it is really Pudge/D-Lee/Penny or Lo Duca/Delgado, in which case I take pudge/dlee/ and penny.

I don't think this is a fair question because the situations are different. Vlad would have been for one year, and we would not have been able to resign him. Delgado, at least as far as the contract goes, is for 4 years. Considering that Delgado is here for the long run whereas Vlad was for the short run, I think think Delgado does make up for it.

I don't mean to be a rally killer here, but I am a bit nervous about our starting pitching. I think it has suffered the most losses since last year with little to rebolster it. I think it is perhaps the most fragile in the NL east next to possibly the Naitonals. I think it has actually become a weakness. Since last year we have lost our two "best producing" starters in Pavano and Penny(I don't want to say best because most would argue that Beckett and Burnett are more talented than Pavano and Penny.) And what have we replaced them with but an aging 38 year old Leiter who averaged 5.788 innings per start and Valdez who led baseball in fewest innings per start with 5.40 and had a subpar 5.19 ERA (4.50 w/ the Marlins). Add that to Willis who failed to go at least five innings in 9 of his 32 starts (28% of his starts) and failed to throw 3 consecutive quality starts last year. Not to mention that Beckett has yet to go a full season without getting injured and is always at risk with his blister problem. Our surest starter is a guy coming off a Tommy John surgery and finished last year with a sore elbow. I think this team was severely hurt by the losses of Pavano and Penny last year. Pavano was a stopper last year who was second in baseball averagin 7.17 innings per start. Penny had an ERA in the low 3's with us and consistently gave us solid starts. Every starter we sent out last year except for Oliver then Valdez, and Willis was a threat to have a great start and carry the team. We don't have that anymore. I think this team's strength has quickly become its weakness, and I don't see it holding up throughout the year. Starting pitcher is the most important aspect of baseball, and it is not something that the Delgado signing with added offense will be able to cover up. The innings/start is perhaps the most crucial statistic to a team's success in the regular season. I don't care how good of a bullpen a team has or how improved ours is (I would argue anyway that it is not that improved). You do not want your bullpen pitching 3 or more innings every game. There is a reason why they are relievers and not starters: they simply are not as good as starters. If we consistently put games in the hands of Riedling, Spooneybarger, Alfonseca, or any other middle reliever in baseball, - even the best ones - our team will not succeed. We win when we have top-flight starters controlling the game. With all that said, if Beckett and Burnett put it together, we will be very formidable. But isn't that the condition for every team in the majors to win? If any team's top two starters have tremendous years, they will be playoff and possibly WS contenders. Overall, I think this year's starting staff is much weaker than last year's and weaker than it was in 2003. I get the feeling that people on this board think we have the same quality starting pitching as we did the last two years and just added a big time offensive player that makes our hitting formidable. But in reality, this team lacks that starting pitching. Not to beat a dead horse, but all this started when we lost Penny for a Lo Duca and Mota. But we could have survived that b/c we still had Pavano. Now after having lost both and not really replacing them this team, in reality, has a major hole now: starting pitching. All this begs the question, "Why didn't we invest the Delgado money in starting pitching?" My guess is that signing Delgado and having hitting is a "sexier" option then adding less prominent starting pitching (i.e. Vazquez). But I argue that though Delgado's signing makes for more headlines, bolstered starting pitching make for more wins.

Career against RHP: .310 / 50 HR / 160 RBI (803 AB) Career against LHP: .306 / 137 HR / 543 RBI (3004 AB) 659679[/snapback] Are you saying that he had almost 4 times more at bats against lefties? Are you sure that those numbers shouldn't be reversed?

I wouldn't be opposed to trading Castillo if we could get some good prospects or possibly a starting pitcher. Castillo or Pierre is replaceable. Maybe we could package Encarnacion with Castillo, clear a fair bit of salary, and either trade prospects for Vazquez or make a real multiyear offer to Burnett. If we move Castillo, Lo Duca would be a good number 2 hitter. I would prefer to trade Lo Duca. In fact, I would love it. I think we could greatly improve our team and financial situation, but the front office would never go for that.

I like a deal that includes Brandon Webb. He is a good young pitcher who is cheap and we could keep on our team for three years. That deal may help us sign Beckett in two years. Plus as a sinker-ball pitcher, Webb would do well in Miami. A deal based around him would help the Marlins' future tremendously.

I believe this thread began as a feeble attempt at humor, the operative word being "attempt". 641630[/snapback] I thought it was very funny.

This may hit a nerve with some people. But perhaps the Marlins should look into releasing Lo Duca and signing a Pierzynski. He'll be cheaper and is the same if not better than Lo Duca. Specifically, he is probably a better hitter, which is more important for us. Also, has anyone heard if the marlins have any interest in Jaque Jones. He may be a nice addition to our outfield depending upon how expensive he is. I really hope the Marlins go after Wade Miller, but I think it is highly unlikely.

And I don't see the Marlins willing to pay more than 6 or 7 mill a year to fill a #5 hole in a rotation. 639681[/snapback] Odalis Perez would not be our fifth starter. He would be more like our 3rd starter and at worst 4th.