Archive for March, 2010

As the offseason winds down, we’ll of course be moving into the regular season once more. April is around the corner, and along with it comes Opening Day and all its glory. As such, we here at Marlin Maniac are likely to once again switch gears and start talking about the season and its performances. So I present to you here the tentative schedule that we’ll be following at Marlin Maniac during the regular season.

We’ve come to the end of our Marlin Maniac Preview series, and now it’s time for me to put down what I feel about this season’s team. How confident am I that we can win 87 games again this year? Where are the strengths and weaknesses? Who is in line to surprise us? Let’s make some bold(ish) predictions on which you may judge me harshly at the end of the year.

Let’s start today with Fish Bites, shall we? Chow down! – First off, a couple roster moves of note. After a bad outing on Sunday, Sean West was optioned to Triple-A New Orleans, knocking one guy out of the race for a starting spot. Out of the bullpen mix is former All-Star Derrick Turnbow, who was released today a day after leaving his only outing in Marlins uniform in excruciating pain. Turnbow has had a 20% tear in his rotator cuff since 2007 and, well, it didn’t look like he did too well yesterday with regards to that. All the [...]

One of the things that annoys me most is when a minor league pitcher will be judged by his ERA. Regardless of how his base peripherals do, people will be negative on a pitcher if he has a higher ERA or very positive if it’s low. With just how much variance there is in BABIP and HR/FB, it seems very silly for me to judge a pitching prospect based off ERA. An example would be Marlins’ prospect Kyle Kaminska. He saw his stock jump a lot this past season. Repeating Greensboro, he improved his ERA from 6.54 to 4.16 even [...]

I promised I’d get another piece on Andrew Miller as soon as I could run SQL queries on my Pitch f/x database. Well, as of yesterday, my computer magically became capable of doing so, and so I’m back to talk about Miller. Let’s see how his 2009 numbers fared against the league average and see if we can find a reason for his problems.

Here’s my appearance on Hotstove.com’s Hot Stove TV, a live webcast interview. Here’s the link to the actual interview page, but if you’d like to enjoy it here, well, here you go. I’d like to thank Tom and Paul for having me on, I enjoyed our conversation on the Marlins. Hopefully, we can do this again come regular season.

This recent post by R.J. Anderson over at FanGraphs once again got me thinking about perennial enigma Andrew Miller. With Miller floundering in his last two Spring Training starts, his hold on the fifth spot in the rotation is dwindling fast. What can we see from his 2009 performance that may be of interest in understanding him?

Two quick things I wanted to mention regarding yours truly and the always awesome Hotstove.com. – At around 1:00 pm EST, I’ll be on with Paul and Tom on Hot Stove TV doing a live webcast. I’ll be covering a couple of things of note, particularly the center field situation with Cameron Maybin still recovering from injury and the status of the bullpen. Take this opportunity to come on by to Hotstove.com and ask a question for myself or something you wanted relayed over to John. I’ll be on to answer any questions readers may have. You can find out [...]

What did I say about stats and Spring Training? It may be an old topic, but damn if it isn’t relevant. From the Miami Herald: Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez — quick to note that he hasn’t given one look at either [Gaby Sanchez' or Logan Morrison's] Grapefruit League numbers — said the decision won’t be difficult if one player holds a distinct statistical edge over the other at the end of spring training. “I’ve always said I want both of them to hit .390,” Gonzalez said. “But, obviously, if one’s hitting .390 and the other’s hitting .057 — competition is [...]

Now you all know I don’t care for Spring Training, especially when it comes to determining who should start or not. But that doesn’t mean the Marlins brass doesn’t care, so some decisions may be made based on Spring Training. I did some perusing through the various media outlets, particularly MLB.com, to find some info on how Fredi Gonzalez and the rest of the staff feels about some of the players they are seeing in Spring Training. I talked about it a little bit in our latest issue of Heater Magazine, but here are some more in-depth notes of interest [...]