I’ve discussed sporadically the question of why the Marlins have maintained success for as long as they have despite continually low payrolls. One of the interesting notions for that continued success is the possibility that the team picked up a lot of good starting pieces in the overhaul of the 1997 fire sale. I had always sort of assumed that the haul that we received paved the way for much our success from 2000 onward. But was it the case? Thanks to Juan C. Rodriguez’ recent listing of Marlins top 100 prospects as listed by Baseball America and Rally’s WAR [...]

Today we move from some of the positions of contention and lesser production to the one position the Marlins can count on for excellent production: shortstop. If you are anything of a Marlins fan, you should know who will be manning this position for 2010 and hopefully many years after. So what can we expect of Hanley Ramirez this season?

Next on the list is the one with the highest chance of having an impact on the 2010 Florida Marlins’ season. Drafted in the 4th round of the 2005 draft, Gaby Sanchez has constantly been putting up good slash lines but his age has also played a major factor.  After the jump, we’ll take a more in depth look into his numbers and what we can project based off them.

(MJ: I’ll be busy all day and will not have time for Marlin Maniac until the late night hours today, but luckily for you fellow Maniacs, my partner-in-crime John Herold has you covered. Today you’ll get a chance to view the next installment of the 2010 Marlin Maniac Preview and John’s sixth best position player prospect, which I won’t spoil for you. Enjoy and leave some feedback!)
We now move across the diamond to one of the more important and underrated positions in the game, third base.  While the Marlins have had question marks going into spring training as to just [...]

Last time we met, we discussed some of Larry Beinfest’s major transactions up to and past the 2003 World Series season. Today, we’ll cover a couple more moves from Beinfest’s time as general manager and see how they grade out.
First though, a quick update on the Derrek Lee-for-Hee Seop Choi trade. Reader JoeA dug through the Internets and found this article from RotoWorld in reviewing the top prospects as listed by now current NBCSports writer Matthew Pouillot. What was intriguing was that Pouillot ranked Choi as the fifth-best prospect in the country at the time, behind some pretty prominent names; [...]

Moving from first base around to the next station on the diamond, Marlin Maniac will now cover the Marlins’ second base situation. At the start of the offseason, the position was one of intrigue, as the candidates for play at the spot were unknown. However, as the offseason wore on, it became clear that one player would return and stabilize the position for 2010. Let’s take a look at that player.

As we arrive to the home stretch, one thing to know is that the last three players are very much interchangeable.  These seven prospects could be broken up into four tiers.  Those within the same tier are very similar in value and an argument could be made for either one to be ahead.  To make things easier, let’s steal John Sickel’s grading system.  That would make Stanton an A, Dominguez and Morrison B, Smolinski B-, and the final three C+.  What this means is that, like with Dominguez and Morrison, how I order the final three is a lot more [...]

Today, we now move from a position that is fairly set for the start of the season into one in a bit of flux. From the position of least expected offense, we move to the position of greatest expected offense, first base. The Marlins enter this season with question marks at the first base position for the second straight year running.

Part of what we’ll do for the official Marlin Maniac preview of the 2010 Florida Marlins is to go position by position and give brief outlook on the state of that position for the season. Since today is the start, I’d figure we could go through position players first, and what better place to start in terms of position players than the backstop, or the catcher position. Here’s how the Marlins stack up at catcher.

The Marlins reported to camp over the weekend, and I figured this would be the perfect time to begin officially previewing the 2010 season. The Marlin Maniac crew will introduce you to the 2010 team position by position, role by role, and give you a projection based on playing time estimates and rate projections provided by sources such as CHONE and the Fans over at FanGraphs. Then, at the end, we’ll have an idea of what the team could be by the end of the season. First, we’ll start off with sort of an overview; what follows after the jump [...]