Fish Bites
By Michael Jong
Little bits of news for you today, courtesy of the Marlin Maniac.
– Construction of the new stadium finally started! There was a bit of a $6 million gap to take care of (the Marlins are paying, after the city respectfully declined taking on more public money for a private project), but construction finally started at 7 a.m. yesterday. See you all at the ballpark in three years!
– Alfredo Amezaga is getting his knee checked again, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reports. The Marlins really miss his late-inning defensive prowess at multiple positions; having him late in the game gives the Fish two premium defenders in Amezaga and Brett Carroll to finish up games. Also in the article are updates on Kiko Calero and Anibal Sanchez.
– Hook, Line Drive, and Sinker’s GameFish knows the best thing to cure the Marlins of their blues is the Nationals. She also does an excellent Renyel Pinto impersonation; I wouldn’t be surprised if he really thought it was too easy.
– Joe Frisaro of the Palm Beach Post asks in his blog if the Marlins really are legitimate postseason candidates. Dave George of the Post says yes, they have a chance at the division. I’m a big believer of the team (otherwise it’d be hard to blog for them) but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions. The division is competitive because everyone is struggling and everyone has flaws, the Marlins included. It’ll be up to who best makes up for these flaws, and if I had to prognosticate a winner today, my money would be on the Phillies, with the Fish a very close second.
– Driveline Mechanics’ devil_fingers with a “retrojection” (his word, not mine) and retrospection on Vernon Wells’ currently ridiculous deal. I was shocked to learn he was the second least valuable player in baseball so far this year, mostly due to his inability to move in CF at all (-20+ runs by UZR).
– Finally, a couple of FanGraphs pieces. R.J. Anderson’s got Kevin Millwood regressing big time thanks to his high strand rate, while Erik Manning shows some minor league numbers saying Andy Marte’s career isn’t Quad-A yet.