Archive for December, 2010

I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year going into 2011. The start of 2011 promises good new things for me, and I hope it does so as well for all of you Maniacs and the Marlins that we love so much. With the Hall of Fame voting looming and the annual discussions on who should be in, who shouldn’t be in, and why Bert Blyleven was vastly superior to Jack Morris (agreed), I had a few thoughts on the Hall of Fame with regards to the Marlins. I looked back last year at two articles that I had [...]

Mike Stanton had one of the more memorable rookie seasons from a Marlin in recent times. When you stack that next to Gaby Sanchez‘ solid rookie season and Logan Morrison‘s late-season surprise year, the Marlins had a nice triplet of solid rookie performances in 2010. If it weren’t for the crop of amazing rookies that debuted this year in the majors (hello Jason Heyward, Buster Posey, and Stephen Strasburg), the Marlins may have had another Rookie of the Year award on their hands. This got me thinking about the past rookies in Marlins history. The Fish have always been a [...]

Fellow Maniac Mike recently brought up that the Marlins may need more assistance in the starting rotation rather than in either center field or third base. The Marlins are clearly in disagreement, as they feel that the rotation they have assembled, including free agent acquisition Javier Vazquez and the set of Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Anibal Sanchez, should be good enough to compete. Here’s what Mike argued in an earlier post: The Marlins need pitching (and a new owner). They have two starters with an era under 4.0. Why they’d sign Vazquez with a 5.32 era is beyond my [...]

Recently I discussed Ricky Nolasco’s recent extension with the Marlins and how it was a solid move for the Fish. Matthew Carruth of FanGraphs agreed, citing FanGraphs’ WAR totals to back him up: On top of that, $11.5 million is paying Nolasco as if he’s approximately a 2.5-win pitcher. Nolasco easily exceeded that in both 2008 and 2009 and even matched that in an injury-shortened 2010 season. All the Marlins need is for him to do is repeat 2010 three more times and they’ll have broken even. Is that feasible for Nolasco? Of course, this sparked yet another argument about [...]

I hope all of you fellow Marlin Maniacs had a merry Christmas and happy holidays. I hope you all got your shopping done; in my family, we tend to give out gifts at any time which is opportune, meaning we do not necessarily have to get our gifts out by Christmas, but I still did some limited holiday shopping this year. The Marlins appear to be done with their shopping for the holidays, having completed what they wanted to do this offseason. However, it seems that Marlins fans feel there is still something left to be addressed on the old [...]

The Marlins have made it very clear that one of their goals this offseason was to revamp the bullpen after last season’s disaster. The team has gone through this process by acquiring multiple relievers via trades, including Mike Dunn, Ryan Webb, and Edward Mujica. The Marlins only acquired one reliever via a signing, inking a two-year deal with lefty Randy Choate. I have been mostly critical of the approach seen here. I understand what the Marlins are doing in trying to fix the problems of last year, but trading assets for relievers seems like a bad deal when reliever performance [...]

In previous seasons, the Marlins were wary about handing extensions because they were constantly concerned about their financial status. The team simply wasn’t willing to commit years to players it was not sure were going to be worth the money. Now that the Fish have committed three extensions to important Marlins Hanley Ramirez, Josh Johnson, and Ricky Nolasco, it seems the time for hesitance on extensions is past. In 2008, the Fish extended Ramirez with an excellent deal that will be paying him below market value through 2014. Johnson and Nolasco received similar extensions that will take them through 2013. [...]

With the time crunch I’m currently under, I would still like to briefly discuss the Marlins’ intelligent move to extend Ricky Nolasco over the weekend. The deal was reported as a three-year, $26.5M deal, which is just around what I predicted a few weeks back in my revised offseason checklist. The deal is not likely to be all that different from this breakdown: 2011: $6M 2012: $9M 2013: $11.5M This deal means a few things for the Marlins. Beyond locking up a decently young pitcher through his first free agent year, the Marlins are showing a commitment both to Nolasco [...]

I will be off for today and Friday. I’m returning to the US to take a much needed vacation, and these two days will involve me finishing a move on the island and then packing and taking my day-long flight from Dominica to Atlanta. I will return on Monday with more Marlins coverage.

After some confusion, it seems the Marlins have signed lefty reliever Randy Choate to a two-year deal worth $2.5M TOTAL plus incentives in each season. The confusion arose from the wording of Rosenthal’s initial Tweet, which sounded as if it implied a two-year, $5M deal that would have earned my unyielding ire. As it stands, the deal to acquire Choate just ends up being an unexciting deal that probably could have been avoided. Choate is a 34-year old lefty reliever who led the American League with 85 appearances last season, though he only pitched 44 2/3 innings (such is the [...]