bmg42

2 years ago today was Jose Day. The last Jose Day. We were going to come up short that year, but there was so much hope for the future. Jose was unhittable, the outfield was as good as any in baseball, Dee was back from suspension, JT looked like a really good catcher. The future sure looked bright, even if Loria still owned the club. I was at that game, and there was something in the air that we hadn't had for a long time - hope. There was actual hope for the Marlins - something we haven't had too often. When he pitched at home, you always expected that the Marlins were going to win, almost like when the Hurricanes play a non-BCS team at home. And fun, too. The Marlins tend to rip the fun out of the game. But Jose made baseball fun again. If someone had told me that would be the last time we'd see him pitch, I doubt I would have believed it. Let's say the boat flips over but everybody survives the crash. Maybe Jose serves a suspension but he wises up and stops the partying, especially on the road. Who knows - he could have put up Bob Gibson / Sandy Koufax numbers for years. With the way strikeout totals have increased, he could have raised his K/9 rate well past the 12.5 rate he had in '16 and threaten 300+ K every year. I can't imagine we'll ever see someone like him again. Dammit.

They did lower at least some ticket prices. My two tickets were 20 a game in ‘17. They were raised to 21 for 18 - one reason I did not renew. I checked it out, and they lowered the tickets back to 19 a game.

Funny, I had always assumed that replacement level was the replacement for that position, not overall. So apparently the WAR formula helps Franco and hurts Anderson for their positions. However, the 11 HBP give Brian a serious OBP boost - about 20 points. Without those HBP he’s got an OPS closer to .730 than .750.

Comparing WAR for an RF and a 3B isn't always helpful. If you want the guy with a slash of .352/.396./748 over the guy with a slash of .323/.484/.807 I guess that's your prerogative. I'll take the guy with 20 HR in 384 AB, especially since we've got a Marlins team that has nobody that has that kind of power. Funny thing - much of Anderson's edge in OBP this year is his 11 HBP, good for about an extra 20 points...

The problem is the same as in other sports: what is efficient is not always what is exciting. Everything evolves. When new things work, everybody starts to use them. Sabermetrics started out as a way to understand what really goes on in baseball, but now everything is based on sabermetrics. And why not? If the idea is to win, and there's something you can do that makes that a couple of percent more likely, why wouldn't you do it? Teams have discovered that hitters have definite patterns of where they hit it, so shifts are everywhere. And many players have said they can't beat a shift unless they bunt. And teams have also decided that taking a few extra hundredths of a second away from hitters makes too much sense, so rather than have one guy save his arm so he can go 7-8 innings, they'd rather the guy go all out for 5 innings and bring in 4 more guys who can throw 98+ for an inning. Teams have also decided that everyone should swing for the fences every time up, in the same way that NBA teams have decided that mid-range jumpers are inefficient. The big problem is that every one of these changes have taken action out of the game. They've essentially turned baseball into cricket. Now, OK, a lot of people like cricket, but most of those people aren't Americans... Maybe the worst new idea is the idea that tanking is good for you. It's one thing when it's just one or two teams, but when a quarter of the league decides that losing a lot is better than being OK, well, most people in the US aren't interested in watching teams that have no hope. It's tough to think what MLB could do to fix this. If you make the strike zone bigger, some guys are going to strike out 250 times a year. If you make it smaller, someone is going to get to 80 HR in a year. They probably can't legislate against the shift. They certainly can't force teams to have fewer pitchers on the roster. The only thing that can really save things is the next round of evolution. And don't think it can't happen - relatively quickly, too. Maybe the new ballparks in Tampa and Oakland will be pitchers parks. Maybe the 1-IP 100 MPH guys become really expensive and teams decide to go back to longer starts. Maybe hitters will spend this offseason learning to beat shifts and someone like Justin Bour hits .330 with 95 hits to RF next year and still gets 25 HR in the band-box known as Citizen's Bank Park. Maybe teams realize that if 10 teams are tanking and claiming low revenues due to plummeting ticket sales, there's too much competition for prospects and no reasonable expectation that any particular team will be able to turn it around. (Quick, how many guys on a hypothetical 2021 winning team in MIA are in the organization right now? Five to seven, maybe?). A good example of this is the wildcat in the NFL. It worked for awhile, and then defenses figured out how to stop it, so teams have basically scrapped it, replacing it with the read-option. If you don't like the read-option, don't worry - they'll figure out how to defend that, too.

He's solid, but he's not an All-Star. He'll probably never be an All-Star. He'll never be as good as Arenado, for example. When Seager comes back, Machado will move to 3B, and he's not better than him, either. Or Kris Bryant. So no ASG for him (those guys are 27, 26 and 26). Maikel Franco at 25 is the same age as Brian, and - I wouldn't want Brian over him. Redon, Suarez, Shaw / Moose - I'm sorry, but I can't see Brian being better than any of these guys. So yeah, Brian's not a bad player, and he still has some room for growth, but I'm not sure if he'd be an everyday player on a playoff team. Take all the playoff teams, or potential teams right now, assume their players are all healthy, and then try to find a place for Brian in that lineup. It's a lot harder than you think. I guess he'd play 3B for the Red Sox over their 21-year-old kid Devers, but I highly doubt the Sox would swap them straight up... PS Look back at the Marlins' best teams - Brian doesn't have a place in the lineup on the '97 team or the '03 team...

Sure. Bill James, when talking about HOF candidates, asked a bunch of questions. One of those questions was, “If this player was the best player on his team, would this team be capable of winning the World Series?” If the answer is no, then that player shouldn’t be in the HOF. If Brian Anderson is the best player on your team, is your team a playoff-caliber team? Well, he’s the second-best player on a team about to lose over 90 games, so that’s a no at this point. Is there room for Anderson to grow? He’s already 25, so there’s some room for growth but not as much as you think. Look at the Red Sox - Bogaerts, Benintendi and Betts are all 24-25, and I don’t think they’d trade any of them for Anderson. Look at the other teams at the top this year - is there a place in the lineup for Anderson when everyone’s healthy? Maybe Anderson might become a nice 6-hitter a championship team. But then you’d need to find the guys in the middle of the order, the real hitters, to get you there. Right now the Marlins have exactly one guy who fits the profile of a championship player, and that’s JT. That’s what I mean.

The fact that Acuna hasn’t played all year doesn’t matter when he’s hit 19 HR with a .571 SLG and a .918 OPS while playing CF for 2 months plus (good enough for 2.8 WAR in those 69 games). If he maintains anything close to that pace Anderson has no shot at ROY. Qualifying only counts for batting average leaders so it’s pretty misleading for them to say he’s got the best stats. The sad thing is he’s been basically our only bright spot (other than JT) and he’s nowhere near good enough to be a championship-caliber player.

OK, so they can't send him down. They can demote him to mopup man for the rest of the month and then have him watch all September.

We'll know a little more about the education of Derek Jeter when we find out what he does about Urena.

Hopefully Urena getting tossed prevents a major incident in this game

It's mid-September, '97. The Marlins are trying to hold off a few teams to get the Wild Card and make the playoffs. The Rockies were in town, and we were losing in the 9th. Rockies Closer Jerry DiPoto (who's now the Seattle GM) loaded the bases with 2 out, and Bobby Bonilla came to the plate. And this happened: Bonilla AB vs DiPoto I was at that game, and the place went about as nuts as Wrigley did last night. We'll see if it was a taste of things to come for the Cubs like it was for us...

The team telegraphed this. They said they want to get Brinson, Cooper and Sierra 100 AB each the rest of the way. Only way that could happen is to have Cooper play 1B most of the time.

Actually, the Marlins have come up with a decade-old idea. Be really bad for a few years, and if you draft well and stash enough prospects, a few of them will become championship-caliber players. Unfortunately that strategy might only work when there’s only one or two teams doing that, as opposed to the current half-dozen. And that’s the charitable view of the strategy...

I may be the one guy to believe this, but I’d trade the 2 championships for consistently good baseball. The Braves have only won once since they moved to Atlanta - you want to trade our history with theirs since ‘93? Winning the Series is a crapshoot - I’d rather wake up on opening day, every year, knowing my team is going to be at least OK with a chance to be very good