Archive for July, 2009

Links galore for today. Analyses of things coming soon, I promise. – First off, tonight’s Game 2 between the Marlins and Phillies. Ricky Nolasco to start for the Marlins opposite ace Cole Hamels for the Phillies. Hamels has struggled his last few starts while Ricky, aside from the ugly outing in Arizona, has looked brilliant. Let’s get that game back tonight. – R.J. Anderson over at FanGraphs has some favorable comps for Hanley Ramirez. There was a bit of talk about how good Hanley would be if/when he has to move off of short to either third base or center [...]

So, this was a debacle. I don’t know how Jamie Moyer does it, but he has definitely had this group of Marlins’ respective numbers pretty much each and every time out. Let’s take a look at some observations. Chris Volstad, long ball, yada yada yada I don’t think we need to say much more than that. This has been Chris Volstad’s Achiles heel all season long, and today it looked extra bad, to the tune of three home runs, two by Raul Ibanez and one by Ryan Howard, his 200th career shot. The rest of Volstad’s peripherals looked fine, as [...]

Our latest Shark in the Tank features That Balls Outta Here’s own Brant Houghton. You should check him out sometime, he’s always got some good insight and interesting views on Phillies baseball. If you’re a Phillies fan, enjoy. But if you’re here, you should be a Marlins fan! Anyway, check it out. Michael Jong: Hey everyone, welcome again. Today I’ll be talking with Brant Houghton of FanSided.com’s own Phillies blog, That Balls Outta Here. As we all know, we’ve got the 2nd place Marlins and the 1st place Phillies squaring off for a four-game set in South Florida. How’s it [...]

Quick Bites links before I start working on a real article. Haven’t done that in a while. – First off, here’s what might be the most important series of the season so far, a four-game set with the Phillies starting tonight. The Marlins will send Chris Volstad to the mound to start the official second half, while the Phillies counter with legendary Marlins killer Jamie Moyer. The last time we faced the slow-tossing lefty type, Barry Zito shut us out for 8 1/3 innings. Still, I like our chances and will be cheering madly tonight. Also, Mr. Marlin Jeff Conine [...]

Here are some Fish-links just hours before the Midsummer Classic. I won’t be watching, at least not for long, but I would like to see Hanley and JJ get their due. – Ted Berg of SNY.tv had a hilarious piece on the bro-tastic Marlins. I’d hate to think my favorite squad is the group of “bros” that Berg so eloquently fit into every fifth word (it was very well done), but c’est la vie, I’m a nerd myself and I love ‘em. – Cameron Smith of the Washington Post’s Baseball Insider writes that Miami-Dade better get it’s money’s worth out [...]

I found a trade proposition from the Anthony Hernandez at Miami Sports Generation: Dan Uggla is expendable with the emergence of Brett Carroll. Carroll would become the everyday right fielder, Chris Coghlan would moved down to second base and Jeremy Hermida would slide back over to left field. Brett is better defensively at right than Hermida and Coghlan is lighter on his feet at second. Relief pitcher Heath Bell was the set-up man for all time saves leader Trevor Hoffman last year. After Hoffman departed for Milwaukee, Bell got the nod for closer. Bell leads the National League with 23 [...]

Recently, the guys at The Hardball Times released a simple xBABIP calculator that could be used to predict BABIP based on batted ball data. Thinking that some Marlins hitters may be overvalued/undervalued, I converted each of the starters’ batted ball profiles into an xBABIP and compared them to both their current BABIP and their ZiPS updated projected end BABIP. Here’s your tally: (Note: Numbers calculated from FanGraphs from prior to today’s game) Using the naked eye test, my feeling tells me there’s a bit of an overestimation of groundballs in the calculation; the total for John Baker’s xBABIP seems absurd. [...]

We’ve finished Part 1: Hitting and Part 2: Defense, so let’s take care of the final piece of this triumvirate puzzle, the pitching staff. To evaluate the staff, I’ll be looking at a few statistics we might be aware of. ERA will only be mentioned once, but the team’s FIP and tRA (see here for a description of tRA; it’s very good) will be mentioned often. I’ll be using both tRA and FIP to compare the effectiveness of both, as tRA encompasses batted ball data that seems to be decently under control of a pitcher (i.e. pitchers do have some [...]

Since I haven’t been good about keeping up with my daily output, I’ll put up a special Weekend Edition of Fish Bites. Also, there’s something I just had to get to. – First off, tonight’s game between the Marlins and Diamondbacks. Sean West takes the bump against Jon Garland for the D-backs. The Fish are looking to bounce back from a miserable team outing last night, so we’ll see if the bats can wake up and West can recover from his string of poor outings. – In the thriller of a game Thursday night (you know, the one with The [...]

Uh, wow. I turned the game off to hang out with my girlfriend and do a little catch-up work, and was pleasantly surprised when she left and I turned on the TV to see the Marlins down only 7-4. They had just grounded into a double play with the bases loaded to end the inning. And then this happened. The Inning, Part Deux Everything that could have gone right for the Marlins did, and subsequently everything that could have gone wrong for the D-backs did as well. The hindsight-brilliance of Fredi Gonzalez to bring Brett Carroll in for Chris Coghlan [...]