Fish Bites

As the Marlins’ season continues, so does the number of delectable Fish Bites links related to everything Marlins. If you are hungry to read Marlins action beyond Marlin Maniac, here are some good choices from the past week.

– Sun Sentinel beat writer and good friend of the Maniac Juan C. Rodriguez had his first live chat of the season on his blog. I’ve read through it and there were some interesting points to be made, particularly about how unlucky Anibal Sanchez really was in his start in Houston. You should take a gander. (Side note: this is why I wouldn’t give full access to commentary in a Q&A type chat. It just becomes really difficult to keep up with all the questions and comments people have).

– Juan C. Rodriguez also had this to add regarding the Hanley Ramirez – Bill Hall sliding incident and subsequent beanings. I personally think it was a hard-nosed play that was a bit harder than it needed to be, but in no means outright dirty. By the way, Edward Mujica got fined for hitting Hall on Sunday.

– Speaking of which, Strip Club with Stanton has unveiled the second part of their epic Bonifacio Saga, in which Emilio Bonifacio wills Hall into sliding into Ramirez as part of his dastardly evil plan.

– Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald talks about how Gaby Sanchez does well without being a prototypical first baseman. The part I hate the most about this article is its tagline:

"Gaby Sanchez might not be the typical star first baseman with power numbers, but he is hitting .343 for the majors’ best doubles-hitting team."

First off, representing Sanchez as a .343 hitter isn’t true; he has hit .343 so far this season, but that number is nowhere near his true talent level (ZiPS has him at .275 for the remainder of the season). Also, who cares that the Marlins are the league’s leading doubles-hitting team? What does that tell you about anything? Doubles are no better than home runs at describing how good an offense is. How about these numbers:

Team OBP: .335 (10th)
Team SLG: .409 (13th)
Team wOBA: .325 (13th)

These three numbers more or less tell you that the Fish have been a slightly above average so far this season. Couching the statement by saying that the team leads the league in an offensive category is a way to spin it more positively than it probably is.

– David of Marlins Diehards has his latest addition to the Children of the Diaspora, Marlins career home run leader and my favorite player Dan Uggla. Best line of the piece:

"Best Marlins moment: For me, it has to be the All-Star Game performance. It sums up the Marlins existence so nicely. No matter how many things they do right, they really only get attention for their missteps."

Indeed, that is the history of the Florida Marlins in a nutshell. Wiser words could not be said.

– Apparently someone thinks that moving Chris Coghlan to center field has paid off. Might it have ever occurred to people that balls for which a poor center fielder has to dive are hard to distinguish from balls that a good center fielder fields cleanly? I think that might be what we saw with some of Coghlan’s early “highlight reel” catches.

– Craig of Fish Stripes shares this interesting catch from Craig Calcaterra of the usually awesome Hardball Talk about guys in the booth calling players by first names. I agree with Fish Stripes Craig that using first names and nicknames is acceptable for the local broadcast guys. Of course, that doesn’t make Rich Waltz and Tommy Hutton two of the most annoying homer broadcasters in MLB; the million other things that they do that make them unabashed and at times unprofessional-sounding homers does the trick. They aren’t good at all.