Nothing not obvious.

 

Wild Marlins look for consistency

The Mets are playing with incredible passion, the Phillies are getting great offense from Chase Utley and great pitching from Vicente Padilla, the Nationals are hanging in there longer than anybody thought they would and the Astros have their Big Three and Brad Lidge. If any of them put together a four- or five-game winning streak at this point, they could wind up winning the wild card.

 

But there can be no doubt that the team that probably scares everybody the most is the Marlins, who have the pitching, the talent and the experience to become October's most dangerous team.

 

They've also demonstrated enough inconsistency to make one wonder if they'll make it to the postseason.

 

Marlins manager Jack McKeon is trying to address some of the offensive problems, sticking Miguel Cabrera at third base and benching Mike Lowell. On Friday, Jeff Conine took Cabrera's place in left field and thrived, beating up on the Cubs.

 

With rookie Jason Vargas throwing well, Florida has four strong starting pitchers; Vargas joins Dontrelle Willis, Josh Beckett and A.J. Burnett. Todd Jones continues to have one of the more underrated performances in baseball, re-establishing himself as a closer. In Friday's game, he went right after Derrek Lee and struck him out in an impressive display of hubris. Guillermo Mota is throwing the ball extremely well these days. The Marlins have Cabrera, one of baseball's best right-handed hitters, batting back-to-back with Carlos Delgado. They're capable of playing good defense.

 

If they get one more consistently productive hitter in their lineup, whether it's Conine or minor-leaguer Jeremy Hermida, or maybe Lowell, they could run away with a playoff berth. If they make it into the October tournament, they would be formidable, with all of their dominant starting pitching and all of the experience they gleaned two years ago, as they won a World Series.

 

That the most dangerous team might not make the playoffs indicates how wide open this postseason will be.

Good read.

I quoted part of that in the game chat... :plain

 

Good stuff.

Olney makes a good point about the emergence of another "consistently productive hitter" being a big part of the Marls making the postseason.

Olney makes a good point about the emergence of another "consistently productive hitter" being a big part of the Marls making the postseason.

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We can say that we have that with Niner starting in LF. I almost consider him like a repeat pick up we had in 2003 when we moved Miggy to 3B after Lowell got injured and traded for Niner.

Subtracting Lowell and getting our regulars back to health should provide enough offense.

Olney makes a good point about the emergence of another "consistently productive hitter" being a big part of the Marls making the postseason.

918350[/snapback]

 

We can say that we have that with Niner starting in LF. I almost consider him like a repeat pick up we had in 2003 when we moved Miggy to 3B after Lowell got injured and traded for Niner.

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I'd feel better if there were the option of Hermida platooning with him, but oh well, at least you can say that McKeon is taking steps in the right direction by not being blindly loyal to Lowell. Not to say Mikey shouldn't play, but he should not be penciled into the lineup as long as he's hitting .190 in August.