2010 Florida Marlins Thread

Sad thing is he saw, and absolutely blew it. Which is worse. He made the mistake of calling it too quickly. That's not a play you need to call right away. If you need to take a split second to see that the ball lands fair, and there's no way it could've crossed the bag foul and came back fair, take an extra second to do so. The run would've scored easily anyhow.

I've heard and seen A LOT of ignorance about this call today from people who don't even know the rules of baseball. Pretty sickening. If the Braves finish out of the division by one game and don't make the playoffs, I'm sending a horses head to Davidson's house.

 

Well that sucked. Barring something miraculous here, we done.

 

I agree, it was just not a good call. And he didn't bother consulting with any other umpire. Video replays wouldn't be a bad idea for a call like this that effects the outcome of a game.

Philly is going to come back down to Earth. They won't be playing struggling teams forever. [No offense Marlins fans] No way they take a series against Atlanta without Howard or Utley.

 

The Marlins pen is just downright awful. But yeah, getting swept at home without facing Utley or Howard is pretty bad. DAMN YOU MARLINS.

 

well thats a kick to the dick.

 

And you were disagreeing with me a few pages back that we were still in this thing.

This is one time I really hate having a SITYS on my hands.

 

A few pages back we were in the middle of July 5.5 games out of the WC.

 

The Heat is having run the point night...so the Marlins counter with pitch the eighth night?

 

We weren't struggling coming in though. We ran into the buzz saw known as Halladay-Hamels-Oswalt and they missed our one and two.

The bullpen is bad but it doesn't help that our starters haven't gotten into the 6th inning in a while.

EDIT: We missed Hamels but my point still stands.

 

A few pages back we were in 7th place in the Wild Card race. And we still are. I told you guys, look at the amount of teams in front of us, not the amount of games back.

Nothing's changed except for the fact that you guys are finally remembering that we're a potentially good team constrained by the worst bullpen in the majors.

Can't possibly produce any worse results, and Bozo the Art Clown would love to save on payroll.

 

We aren't even close to the worst pen in the majors. (ARZ)

 

Have to disagree. Our bullpen is atrocious and has cost us a shot at the Wild Card. Arizona is 23 games back in their division: their bullpen hasn't cost them anything despite being horrible.

 

That wasn't even what he said. We aren't the worst bullpen in the majors. Go look at the stats, it isn't even close. They have an ERA of 7.00.

This team is done, but we weren't done when we were 5.5 games out. The teams in front of us were struggling, and we had some games to be played against them. Unfortunately, we couldn't keep up our hot streak, and lost 5 in a row.

 

1) My point still stands. Their pen is the worst.

2) You don't think the bullpen that gives up an earned run every 7 innings out of 9 has anything to do with being 23 games out? That offense mashes.

 

If the season ended today, who wins the NL Cy Young?

 

Josh Johnson is still probably the front runner but Tim Hudson is forcing himself into the picture more and more with each start. You can't really count out Halladay either, especially due to the bias for northeast teams and players.

 

1) Josh Johnson 2) Adam Wainwright.

Then everyone else.

 

If they go strickly by wins, and some other guy steals the award I'm gonna be so pissed.

 

If a writer votes for someone strickly by wins, then that person should have his vote taken away. It's 2010, there's more to these awards and better stats to go by than W/L and ERA for pitchers or BA, HR and RBI for hitters. With that being said 90% of the voters are still stuck in the stone age when it comes to voting and stats, so be prepared to be pissed.

 

Strikeout pitchers are sexy and all but Hudson gets it done just as well as those guys do. He could catch them in ERA with the roll he's been on lately.

 

I think being 23 games out is a team effort of sucking.

 

Pitching is atrocious but there's nothing wrong with their offense.

 

Hudson is a stud but those guys are on a another level.

FIP:
JJ: 2.21
AW: 2.95
TH: 4.01

 

You can argue that because Hudson isn't a strike out pitcher, his fate is in the hands of his fielders for the most part. Whereas Josh Johnson and Wainwright can control their own destiny/game due to their swing and miss potential. I do think you have to give the edge to Johnson or Wainwright over Hudson because of that.

EDIT: And you can look at Mainge's post directly above mine too.

 

I can't counter this because I don't know what FIP stands for.

 

Atlanta is a middle of the pack team as far as errors committed. If they were some amazing defensive team that might hold more weight. I think saying his fate is the hands of the fielders is a little of an insult to his ability to pitch. It's not asking the world of major league infielders to field ground balls. Most should be able to do that at a very high level. They're not out there making highlight reels. Just fieldling grounders. Would an atrocious defense hurt his ERA? Yes. A terrible defense will doom any pitcher out there. As I said, both ways get it done, one is just a lot sexier than the other. Defensively Atlanta isn't the most amazing team in the world. You're making it sound like he just throws it over the plate somewhere and expects a bunch of golden glovers to take care of things for him. I don't have a problem with JJ winning the Cy Young. We'll just let Tim Hudson have a World Series MVP.

 

Sorry, it stands for fielding independent pitching. Basically it takes the stats that only a pitcher can control (ie: k's, walk rate, homeruns given up, fb/hr rate, gb rate, etc) and formulates an ERA closer to how he's been pitching. It can give you a good indication of future performance.

First thing, errors are a poor way to judge defense for the most part. Are teams like Washington and Florida poor defensively? Absolutely. But for teams (like Atlanta) that are middle of the pack, errors shouldn't factor in to the discussion. Errors are usually pretty volatile and are more influenced by luck. I don't know how good defensively Atlanta has been but I'll look later.

And two, I think what Ray is meaning to say is that groundball pitchers are more prone to luck than strikeout pitchers. Ground balls always have a chance to become a base hit, whereas, strikeouts do not. An above average strikeout pitcher is more likely to have a better ERA than an above average groundball pitcher, assuming they have the same walk rate and defense. So yes, right now Tim Hudson is getting it done as well those 2 but history shows that luck will even out eventually.

Strikeouts are not just sexy.

 

You know what the difference is between Hudson this year and last year? Last year he struck out more and walked less batters. But his BABIP was .335, meaning way more groundballs got through than this year. This year his BABIP is .235. That won't last forever.

 

You're right, it's just luck his ground balls are getting fielded. It has nothing to do with his pitch movement or location.

 

Yeah it's definitely luck. A .235 BABIP is impossible to sustain. Explain why BABIP fluctuates so much year to year.

 

Mainge pretty much covered my points (nice job by the way). I'm not trying to take anything away from Hudson (who I'm actually a very big fan of) but I'd much rather have a pitcher that can miss bats than one that doesn't. Right now Hudson is pitching better than his underlying numbers suggest. Like Mainge says his opponent BABIP is insanely low to both his career and league average and something like that can correct itself in a hurry. Hudson is pretty much at the mercy of both his defense and luck each time he walks out there due to his low K rate, he's pretty much at his team's mercy every time he releases the ball and there are a lot of things that can happen once there's contact made by the batter. The numbers suggest that he's been pretty lucky this year, which hey sometimes it happens in a given year so it is possible but unlikely this will continue. But at least Hudson issues an insane number of ground balls instead of fly balls so he's always 1 pitch away from a DP (if runners are on) and the best way to stop HRs and big innings is to keep the ball on the ground, so he has that going for him.

 

I'm late with this, but it looks like the team is talking a contract extension with Dan Uggla. I'm surprised, but I guess it's better to extend him than to trade him for nothing.

The team is looking at about $10 million per year over three years. Uggla wants more. He probably deserves it.

 

Do it. Sign Uggla, and give Dominguez his time to develop in the minors. If he's ready before Uggla's contract is up, you ship him off for pitching. Until then, you enjoy Uggla and his 30 homeruns per season.

 

Mike Stanton isn't human. I just love this guy.

 

Yeah he's pretty good. Incredibly, his OPS is up .850. Not to mention he plays the OF like a champ.

Special.

 

Stanton's definitely a great piece to have and hold on to going forward. You have to like our offensive core going into the next 3-4 years.

 

On another note, Andrew Miller sucked again today.

Cameron Maybin better turn into Carlos Beltran. That's the only way we won't look like complete idiots in the Miguel Cabrera trade.

 

Yeah I just mentioned that on the other board. If we can resign Uggla and if Maybin can become respectable, our offense is sitting pretty.

Looking at OPS potential next few years:
Hanley: .950
Stanton: .900
Uggla: .850
Morrison: .850
Sanchez: .800
Coghlan: .800
Maybin: .700 (If he brings anything more than that, with his defense? Sweeeet.)
If we can bring back the Baker/Paulino combo: .750

That's studly.

 

I think our platoon of Baker and Paulino can do better than .750 to be honest. It's quite the platoon if you look at it in depth.

 

Maybe. Anything more than that would be gravy. I am a little conservative with catcher projections just because they get hammered back there.