Archive for December, 2009

Two weeks back on Friday, I did a little piece about two former Marlins who might one day find themselves in the Hall of Fame, Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown. I hope they do get in eventually, and that Sheff gets enshrined with a Marlins cap on his head. That being said, there is one current Marlins player that is on a career path heading towards the Hall of Fame, and that player is  of course Hanley Ramirez. Now, it may be too hasty to call a soon-to-be 26-year old player a Hall of Famer, but with the way that [...]

In case you missed it over the weekend, the Marlins have decided to tender contracts to almost all of their remaining arbitration eligible players (h/t MLBTR). One player not among those listed was Alfredo Amezaga, who was non-tendered and let go. Fredo was a fan favorite among Marlins faithful, but he was obviously an expendable part. He made $1.1M last season in his first arbitration year, and he was due for a raise even though he was out for most of the season with injury. His role on the club was primarily that of a late-inning defensive specialist, though he [...]

Given the importance of the Marlins’ offseason, one could have expected a lot of moves during this past week’s Winter Meetings in Indiana. However, the reality was that the Marlins made very few moves this week and did not apparently discuss a whole lot. In retrospect, this is not terribly surprising, as there were still quite a few important roster-related deadlines to discuss, especially Saturday’s non-tender deadline. However, I still would have expected a big deal to happen involving the Marlins. Instead, this is what happened.

Boy, if there isn’t anything in the world more inspiring than to have a high-90′s fastball. No matter how poorly you pitch, someone will still give you a chance, and they’ll pay something to do it. The Marlins were able to send Matt Lindstrom off to the Houston Astros for right hander Robert Bono and shortstop Luis Bryan. This courtesy of Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald and Twitter. Here’s my quick thoughts: – Lindstrom was the same guy who put up a 3.14 ERA in 2008 after recovering from injury. Unfortunately, that guy wasn’t very good either, but he [...]

You never know about these things when it comes to rumor season, but listen up folks. From T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com, this doozy of an offer: The Rangers made a run at Marlins pitcher Josh Johnson. At one point they were willing to trade Justin Smoak and Neftali Feliz. The Marlins weren’t interested in that one. Hat tip MLBTR. I don’t know what to say. Neftali Feliz showed that he was legit last year coming out of the bullpen, and if he can develop a third pitch for the major leagues, he should be a monster. Justin Smoak is the [...]

I’ll see if I can muster the time for another post today, as I have work to take care of (finally). That being said, if I cannot get another one out, I promise that Revisiting ’03 will return soon. You may even get two topics on it next week. That being said, let’s continue with what I wanted to discuss. I wanted to step back from the rumor mongering about Josh Johnson and Dan Uggla. In light of the recent release of this year’s Hall of Fame nominees, I started thinking about HoF voting, something that often times causes (ahem) [...]

I’ve been hootin’ and hollerin’ about the FanGraphs 2010 Fan Projections for the last few days because I think it is an amazing additional resource for the good people who read the site. If you haven’t done so already, go vote for some Marlins now! In total, 66 position players and 18 pitchers have made the cut for ballots. So far, three Marlins received enough ballots to make the Projections page on FanGraphs and the front page on their respective player pages (30 ballots was the minimum). Hanley Ramirez got in because, well, everyone loves Hanley Ramirez. Both Josh Johnson [...]

Nom nom nom, Fish Bites for your Wednesday mid-morning. – Here’s a list of all eligible free agents who were offered arbitration. As expected, the Marlins did not offer arbitration for Nick Johnson and Kiko Calero. Again, dumb move. – The Sun-Sentinel’s Juan C. Rodriguez has two interesting blog posts for us. In one, he points out that the payroll could go up to $40M. In the other, he details the request of the Marlins to get Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” show to come by and profile the Marlins’ stadium construction. – Joe Capozzi of the Palm [...]

Today is the deadline for teams to offer arbitration for their free agent players. The Marlins have two such free agents who are eligible for arbitration offers, reliever Kiko Calero and first baseman Nick Johnson. However, as Joe Frisaro reports, the Marlins are not looking to offer arbitration to either player. This holds significance for one major reason: the Marlins will be passing up draft picks by not offering arbitration. The question here is why the hell not?