Marlin Maniac » 2010 » October

BBA Ballot: NL Most Valuable Player

Michael Jong — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:03:39 +0000

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 Award, with explanations upcoming within the week, time permitting.

Without further ado, here is the Marlin Maniac’s ballot, ten names strong, for the 2010 Stan Musial Award!

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BBA Announces Walter Johnson Award Winners!

Michael Jong — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:02:23 +0000

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):

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Nolasco continues to confound

Michael Jong — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:01:48 +0000

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 xFIP. However, his 4.51 ERA was once again not conducive of a successful campaign. And while last season showed a drastic difference in run prevention performance before and after his demotion, there is no such cutoff mark this season, as his ERA remained pretty solidly in the mid-4.00′s throughout much of the year.

So once again, Nolasco has confounded Marlins fans, coaches, and the front office with his erratic play. With Nolasco entering his third year or arbitration, an “improved” yet still disappointing performance this year means the Marlins will have to consider either extending him for the future or cutting ties with him soon enough. What will the Marlins do with the uncertainty that is Ricky Nolasco?

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BBA Ballot: NL Pitcher of the Year

Michael Jong — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:19:57 +0000

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 the numbers from FanGraphs have yet to be adjusted entirely, and I’ll probably revisit these votes a little bit later when the numbers have been properly adjusted. It should have little effect on the pitcher voting, but will probably handicap pitchers when it comes to the MVP votes.

With all that aside, let’s look at the top five candidates on the Marlin Maniac ballot, ordered by my choice with my homebrewed WAR totals in parentheses used as a guide.

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Defensive projections for 2011 Marlins starters

Michael Jong — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:59:33 +0000

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 right now.

The other primary reason why I am interested in these numbers is that the Fish will be breaking in some new guys in a few positions. As we know, Chris Coghlan appears to be set to move to the infield, while Logan Morrison will continue his experiment in the outfield. With these changes, along with a few other players in whom I have a vested interest defensively, defense is going to be a very intriguing aspect of the 2011 Marlins season. So let’s take a look at how the defense is going to pan out.

Method

For these projections, I will do a 5/4/3 weighting (5 for the most recent season, 3 for the least recent season) of UZR runs saved, which means we will only look at the 2008 season and beyond. I will estimate defensive games played with innings played/9. In addition, I will regress this sample of UZR with 100 defensive games (125 for the outfield) of a 50/50 split between the Fans Scouting Report runs above average and the league average at the position (+0 runs). For players who have no games played at their respective positions, I’ll estimate via the Fans Scouting Report and the league average only. I’ll discuss the results of only the expected starters on next year’s team, in order of personal interest.

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