Strike 3

I agree he needs to be shut down. It's overdue and sad really because it seems to overshadow how good he was for us in the first half. Not a complete surprise though and I think many of us were extremely concerned about it when we were getting so few innings from our starters.

I agree he needs to be shut down. It's overdue and sad really because it seems to overshadow how good he was for us in the first half. Not a complete surprise though and I think many of us were extremely concerned about it when we were getting so few innings from our starters.

Pinto has one son, Gabriel. But not sure of his age. I missed the game but if Hammer's shot hit the top of the wall and bounced back in, it's a hit not a homer. Remember that Yankees game earlier this year when the ball rolled along the top of the wall for a bit and then fell back in?? PhxPhin is right about the ball hit by Hammer. The replays showed the ball hit the metal rail and, had instant replay been in effect, would have been a HR.

That's some serious airbrushing!

This looks so uncertain and that little shift east isn't very reasurring for us in SE Fla. I haven't seen any shutters up in my neighborhood but I suppose that will change if the 5am advisory shows another shift. I just hope we don't end up with another Irene surprise situation.

Frederico (or would it be Fredirico?) Actually, it would be Federico (in spanish). :thumbup

Teams with low payroll can still compete if they have good scouts and a good GM like we do. However, it would be nice to able able to add a star player here and there to help our current team and put them over the top. It also would have been nice to keep a player like Miggy. I agree with you. The payroll situation hurts when we can't add pieces that would make a difference. Clearly it is not necessary to have the Yankees' payroll to be successful but our payroll has gone ridiculously low. We are much too far beneath every other team and of course that hurts us.

Except when it's the Dolphins...then it's "rebuilding." Ever care to think of the fact that the Marlins were trying to rebuild b/c paying players like Carlos Delgado didn't work for them? Putting aside the definition of "fire sale," the word would never come up in the press with regard to the Dolphins because penny pinching has never been an issue with them. With the Marlins it is often assumed (right or wrong) that it's all about the money so the term haunts them.

I would have to go with Hanley but extra props to Anibal for battling the way he did.

wow, 3900+ plus at the stadium. please tell me most of them were marlins fans. A lot of them were for the concert, so I guess you could say so. Not at all, in fact, it was a very small crowd for the concert. In the club level there were a bunch of people watching the Olympics during the concert. I thought we had an edge in terms of the amount of Marlins fans but there were definitely way too many Cubs fans although it's always fun to shut them up. Every time they started with their let's go cubbies chant around us we would start the 1908 chant. Sanchez was struggling big time but I give him credit for battling out there and somehow managing to minimize the damage. The guy is a fighter! He is one of those guys who is mentally strong because a lesser man would have succumbed in those circumstances. I still worry about the injury too. The bats were frustrating as usual and thank God for Hanley and Cody coming through. The failures to advance the runner from 2nd were particularly frustrating but the Cubs fans were quite upset about not scoring runs with so many runners on base as well.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I never do until it's impossible. I think it's obvious though that there has to be a drastic change here. This team desparately needs a spark. I would have liked to see them call up someone who could provide that in this lineup.

Yeah, because pointing out the flaws on the team and watching them play so badly and coming to the conclusion that the chances of them winning the division are very unlikely makes me not a fan. In order to be a fan, I have to ignore the obvious flaws of the team and pretend that magical fairies will come to make them better at baseball. DUH! act like a damn fan instead of always putting the team down Why does acting like a fan mean acting like you? He's here because he's a fan. If he didn't give a crap he wouldn't be paying attention, he wouldn't be bothered by what happens and he sure as hell wouldn't be here. Fans have opinions and they are not clones. Why is that so difficult to understand?

This article is pretty spot on. Cote isn't being negative. He's simply saying that the Marlins should receive some flack for playing badly. He's not being NEGATIVE. He's saying that people should react appropriate to the way the team is playing. I agree with him. This team has been pretty self defeating at times this year with bad mistakes. They have talent. That's pretty much the way I read it. I think more than anything the article speaks to accountability. Maybe to say they've been coddled is a bit much since they don't get enough attention to warrant the word coddle but they have not exactly been held accountable. I don't understand why some people get so defensive because I don't think Cote's being negative either but suggesting that a little kick in the ass is not such a bad thing. I could be wrong but I've been getting the impression that Marlins management are starting to lean in the same direction as Cote.

Bad reviews for Marlins By Greg Cote With your indulgence, I would apply to the 2008 Marlins the words of William Shakespeare, slightly adapted, from his early-1600s play Julius Caesar: I come not to bury the Marlins or to praise them but to admit the spade bearing the dirt is ever closer at hand. OK, so I'm no Shakespeare. Lately, the Marlins aren't acting like the playoff team they purport to be, either, so we're even. South Florida's feel-good story isn't feeling very good these days. The Little Team That Could seems more and more as if it can't, and won't. Marlins bats napped in a 3-0 home loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday night, a defeat that left the slumping Fish 2 ? games back in the National League East and dropping ever further out of any pursuit for the wild card. Heck, the lowly Dolphins, brawling in practice earlier in the day, showed more fight Thursday than the Marlins. Erstwhile ace pitcher Scott Olsen continued a drought that has seen him without a victory since July 19. The Cards' first run fittingly was set up by an error by first baseman Mike Jacobs, one of the defensive culprits for the majors' worst-fielding team. Also fittingly, the un-clutch Marlins were 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position. SWIMMING IN PLACE Olsen said afterward: 'It's hard to keep saying, every day, `You got to put it behind you and move on.' '' The clubhouse TVs bore Olympic swimming. ''It's real frustrating,'' Jacobs said of an offense gone mute lately. ``You can only give credit to the [opposing] pitchers so much.'' A depressing pall hung in the air, it was quiet, the weather was damp and dreary, and a small gathering of witnesses was present. What sounds like the perfect setting for a funeral was instead the ambience at this game, something sadly appropriate. The small crowd watched the Marlins lose for the fifth time in their past seven games, watched a team in need of an extra gear but stalling, a team looking for the clutch but finding the brake instead. I think it might be time to start talking about the Marlins honestly. This team has been coddled in the local and national media. We have been guilty of being so charmed by the perceived overachievement, based on low spring expectations, that the patting on the back goes on even when a kicking in the a -- might be warranted. Nothing said or written about the Marlins this season has been as viscerally on the mark as the frustrated booing heard earlier this week from home fans -- those loyalists who see the Marlins every night, warts and all, not just occasionally in highlight reels. It is fine to give this team attaboys for a season over .500, but the guys have been above criticism for too long. Since reaching a season-best 10 games over .500 on May 26, the Marlins have been 33-39. That is an awfully long time to be mediocre at best. That's a long time to be hanging in the playoff chase by pure luck, by the gift of nobody else being that much better. Warm and fuzzy is fine, but it's time for a little reality show down here. The Marlins haven't been anything special for going on three months now -- good enough to tease and claim to be a part of the playoff race, but not good enough to give you the idea they might be playing in October. The return from injury of pitchers Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez and the emergence of top prospect Chris Volstad should be infusing this club with momentum and spark at just the right time, but it has not shown in the one place it must -- the standings -- because bats are cold when arms are hot, and vice versa. ROAD GETS TOUGHER Florida is 13-14 since the All-Star break, and the path gets no easier, with three games on deck here against the best team in the league, the Cubs, followed by a nine-game road trip. It's wonderful and fine to accentuate the positive by marveling how a team so flawed can still be thinking playoffs this late. But it's time to admit the flaws -- serious one,s such as bad defense and the dearth of clutch hitting -- are not getting any better. They are continuing. They are wanting to ruin what otherwise might be a storybook season. The Marlins rank 12th of 16 NL teams in batting, 13th in ERA and 16th in fielding. The team has a starting center fielder, Cody Ross, batting .206 since the All-Star break, and a superstar, Hanley Ramirez, hitting barely better than that with runners in scoring position. No team's lineup strikes out more (or comes close), and there are entire towns in America populated with fewer people than the men Florida has left on base. These are not trends that suggest October. Let's quit reliving how wrong we all were in February to predict how lousy the team would be -- and giving the Marlins a free ride based on that. Instead, let's start demanding that a team 33-39 since late May starts proving it deserves to be in the playoff race. Let's see if a team looking more and more like a pretender has the fight left to be the contender it thinks it is. Miami Herald

I just wanted to bump this thread because I ran into this... Putting the ?Death Sentence? to Death by Will Carroll A couple of years back, I wrote an article for Slate Magazine in which I said that the labrum tear was the worst injury a pitcher could face. I never called it a ?death sentence? (though I would have thought I had before re-reading it), and I wouldn?t have argued with that characterization. It?s probably my most-quoted work, and I?m still proud of it. But it?s also obsolete. The article from May of 2004 discussed the situation as it existed then, not as it exists now. While a torn labrum isn?t good now, medical science has made huge leaps in fixing this issue. Again, it?s not good to have a torn or even a frayed labrum, but to use a 2004 article to explain it just doesn?t do the situation justice. Things have changed too significantly. Which means that I should update the article, I know. I?m putting that on my off-season things-to-do list. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=981 I'm definitely looking forward to this piece in the offseason. Sanchez should be talked about in it. Good find. I'll be interested to read it too. It's comforting that the says things have changed "significantly."

Dolphin Stadium http://wwc.instacam.com/showcam.asp?id=PROPL&size=S

I agree with Renteria and those who think Hammer is legitimately hurt. The back problem is serious. Hammer is a guy who has always hit, just a good hitter, and since he came back he's a different guy out there. I have to believe it's the back and IMO he should probably be on the DL.

Putting aside any possible bias as a Marlins fan I really do think Billy is a great mascot. Most others look lame by comparison. He does a good job and when he dances, which can't be easy in that costume, he's got rythm. Could definitely take any other mascots in a dance off. Voting: http://www.mascothalloffame.com/

So I just went to the game and stood through a 2 hour rain delay and in the past I've gotten free tickets for such. I heard the announcer say "With tonight's rain delay" then I walked out of hearing range. So I'm wondering if I can use my tickets from tonight as vouchers for tickets to a future game like I've been able to in previous years. More or less. They actually charge you $1 and you can use it for any non-Saturday game. The last time I was in a rain delay was earlier this season that Saturday game in May that ended up being postponed. I traded them in for a Friday night game and they didn't charge us anything. Because it was a Saturday, you can exchange it for any ticket. Also, they didn't charge you a dollar because that game was canceled because of rain, not just delayed. Yeah, I'm sure you're right but when they announced that the game was finally postponed they repeated the info about the dollar charge which was probably a mistake. I've been in some rain delays over the years and I've never been charged so maybe Bob is also right about the season ticketholder theory.

Hopefully they pass the 25,000 mark and we can see a nice full Dolphin Stadium ! And hopefully we outnumber them!

In addition to the teams mentioned I remember Barry Larkin used to be the Reds' captain and John Franco was the Mets' captain. Franco actually wore the C. I think Mike Lowell was the team's player rep (before Beckett) and the unnofficial spokesman but I really don't remember the captain thing. Maybe he was but I don't recall that.

I sometimes disagree with Fredi?s moves and lineups but I?m not at all surprised that La Russa would say this. I think Fredi is respected and well-liked throughout MLB. There are guys that are not so popular who get public criticism or unnamed sources throughout MLB who clearly dislike them but you don?t hear or read any of that with regard to Fredi. Whatever else anyone may think of him as a manager, it?s apparent that he?s quite a decent, ethical guy who treats everyone with respect and gets it in return.

My friend and I called to buy two additional tickets for Saturday?s game and we were hoping to get 2 seats adjacent to our regular seats in Club A. There were only a couple of scattered single seats available in our section. There were some seats available one section over but normally we have no problem getting additional seats close to us. I just wanted to give a heads up to anyone planning to go Saturday that may want good seats but have not purchased them yet. It may not be a good idea to wait until gameday. Of course, you?ll always be able to get tickets but maybe not the ones you would like.

Hanley came through and the bullpen was great. Volstad continues to show tremendous poise and composure. This kid knows how to focus and it's impressive in a 21 year old rookie. Unfortunately, the offense continues to have the same issues.

So I just went to the game and stood through a 2 hour rain delay and in the past I've gotten free tickets for such. I heard the announcer say "With tonight's rain delay" then I walked out of hearing range. So I'm wondering if I can use my tickets from tonight as vouchers for tickets to a future game like I've been able to in previous years. More or less. They actually charge you $1 and you can use it for any non-Saturday game. The last time I was in a rain delay was earlier this season that Saturday game in May that ended up being postponed. I traded them in for a Friday night game and they didn't charge us anything.