Fish Bites

Links! (Nothing witty or polite today)

– First off, we’re going for the sweep tonight against the Braves. It’ll be Rick VandenHurk for the Fish countered by one of the best starters in the game right now in Javier Vazquez for the Braves. It’ll be tough, I don’t like our chances all that much, but a solid start and good pitching might be the difference with the Braves terrible offense.

– Lots of talk about the Marlins and Heath Bell. Talks have included either Sean West or Andrew Miller going one-for-one for Bell. I’ve said that the Marlins can’t afford to mortgagge their future, but it goes especially for their starting pitching prospects, since the organization has weak depth in that department, and especially to acquire a relief pitcher of any kind, and that includes closers. Over at BtB, vivaelpujols has the expected changes in Playoff Odds given a certain transaction. If you take Bell as a 1 WAR player the rest of the year, and that’s pretty hefty for a relief pitcher, it would only up our playoff odds by 2%! Is it worth the prospect we deal? Unlikely.

– In addition, Miller actually got hurt over at Triple-A New Orleans, furthering the chances that he’ll stay here. At this point, I think most of the Marlins front office and the prospects people have seen enough of Miller in the big leagues to know that he won’t project as that guy everyone thought he’d be a few years ago. Let’s just hope Cameron Maybin can fare much better and that Miller gets his act straight and becomes a solid big leaguer for the Marlins.

– Maury Brown’s got the renderings of the Marlins’s new stadium on the inside. Looks great, hopefully we can fill those 37000+ seats. It’s going to be the smallest capacity stadium in baseball, so I expect to see some packed houses. I hope it doesn’t go the way of Nationals Park.

– Lot’s of action on this FanPost over at FishStripes by occasional Maniac visitor Fishcrazy on Jayson Stark talking about the Marlins trade options. It’s worth a read if you’re into the speculation business. Seems like the Marlins turned down the Heath Bell deal…maybe? Will have to stay on top of this.

– A little bit of a plug here on my own work. I did a FanPost over at Beyond the Box Score about Cliff Lee’s series-winning impact in a potentail seven-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It wasn’t much. Have a read.

– Finally, tons of trades yesterday. I already covered the Cliff Lee deal yesterday night, but you may recall me mentioning the whole Freddy Sanchez thing earlier this week as a possible trade option for the Marlins. It would’ve been interesting, could have broken even, but apparently the Giants jumped on him first, and by many accounts, for too much. Freddy Sanchez for Tim Alderson, one of the top pitching prospects of in San Francisco’s organization? In the linked FanGraphs post, there’s a TON of discussion on how good Alderson really is based on his average numbers in Double-A. A lot of people are saying he’s still a top-flight prospect according to the prospect experts, while others are saying they saw him and he simply didn’t have it. I’ll defer to the experts here, but I’d like to point out that getting Sanchez as a second baseman may be worth 2 WAR a year on average, and giving up on a Top 50 overall pitching prospect for a league average hitter and defender for a year and a quarter seems like a bad move.