Archive for October, 2010

We are coming to a close when it comes to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance end of season awards. In fact, we’ve come to the final bit, the National League Stan Musial Award for most valuable player. Today, the Maniac does not have a whole lot of time due to medical school-related constraints, but the ballot has to come out today. As a result, I went ahead and decided the order, based on my homebrew WAR and a few gut-based inclinations based on data accuracy on the pitcher run numbers. What will follow is my official ballot for the Stan Musial [...]

Note: Before checking out the results of the Walter Johnson Award voting, check out my ballot for the award along with the ballot over at Marlins Diehards from fellow BBA bloggers Ted and Dave. With the two biggest end-of-season BBA awards coming up, I figured it would be good to point out the official results here on Marlin Maniac. Check out the winners in this official press release (my reactions after the jump as well):

Ricky Nolasco is the Marlins’ second best starter. There is nothing that suggests otherwise anywhere else in his stats. This year, Nolasco’s strikeouts were down from his standout 2009 season, but he still punched out batters at a 22.1% rate. In the meantime, he has continued to prevent those batters from reaching via the walk, as he walked batters at just a 4.8% clip, almost matching his 2008 success. If there was one thing that Nolasco struggled with again this year, it was in allowing actual runs. He impressed in his peripherals, as evidenced by his 3.86 FIP and 3.55 [...]

Today, we continue our voting for the 2010 Baseball Bloggers Alliance end-of-season awards. Today’s focus will be on a very interesting award, the National League Walter Johnson Award for best pitcher. There were a lot of candidates in this year’s star-studded field, and a certain Marlin was sure to make the cut for the award, so that’s always interesting. I’ll follow the same methodology described in the first post here, so no need to discuss that as of now. I will, however, put up a disclaimer mentioning that the methodology is still sort of preliminary in its execution; some of [...]

With the Fans Scouting Report complete for the 2010 season and UZR numbers fully available to anyone and everyone willing to click over to FanGraphs, I figured it would be an interesting exercise to calculate preliminary estimates on each position player’s defensive capabilities at their expected positions next season for the Marlins. This may seem a bit premature, given that our season just ended, but the truth is that next year’s starting lineup is basically set (outside of catcher) barring a trade of Dan Uggla. We can safely assume that we have the 2011 Marlins starting lineup on our roster [...]

This is the second BBA ballot Marlin Maniac filled out this season. Check out fellow Marlins fans and BBA bloggers Ted and Dave over at Marlins Diehards for their ballot for the Goose Gossage Award. This week, we continue with the BBA end-of-season awards with the National League Goose Gossage Award, awarded to the league’s best reliever. This season, I’ve adjusted the way I do my pitcher WAR, going to an approach where I calculate runs allowed based on RE24 found on FanGraph and take that value away from the average pitcher. I then tease out defensive contribution equal to [...]

A longtime reader of Marlin Maniac brought up his disdain towards my attitude regarding the next Florida Marlins manager in a recent email. Let it be known that I am not alone in this opinion of nonchalance; my good friends Ted and Dave over at Marlins Diehards shared a similar opinion in a much funnier fashion. I am of the opinion that the manager has very easy on-field decisions to make that have a small impact on the outcome of baseball games. I think that managers get paid more for their presence in the clubhouse than for any strategy they [...]

I’m happy for Cody Ross. He’s playing for a contender in the San Francisco Giants, and on Saturday night he came up huge, bombing two homers and contributing .235 WPA en route to a Giants 6-5 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s great that a guy like Cody can be a part of the playoff hunt for the first time and contribute in a big way. As a Marlins fan, it’s good to see him succeeding in the playoffs. Seeing this sort of success has to make Marlins fans upset about how the Marlins gave up Ross, via a simple [...]

With the 2010 regular season complete, the Baseball Bloggers Alliance is once again ready to vote for the 2010 offseason awards! While the first award was released yesterday for the manager of the year, our Connie Mack Award, I decided to start with the National League Rookie of the Year award because I despise any idea of trying to find the best manager in a given season. Instead we are going to begin with the Rookie of the Year award, the BBA National League Willie Mays Award! For this voting, I will be putting up three NL candidates for the [...]

This news bit is from a week ago, but I have been chomping at the bit to get at it over the week. MLB Trade Rumors reported on a recent hot stove piece from Buster Olney that discussed a few interesting notes. The one that particularly caught my eye was this blurb that was rephrased by Ben Nicholson-Smith: – People in MLB front offices believe that the Marlins aren’t developing quite as much talent as they once did. One talent evaluator suggests the Marlins may have to lock up their current players to remain competitive. Dan Uggla and Ricky Nolasco [...]