Archive for May, 2011

In a lot of articles you see around saber-friendly sites like FanGraphs and Beyond the Box Score, you’ll see posts talking about how it is still too early to derive many conclusions from what we’ve seen in this young season. However, for some players, it is just too difficult to resist making a decision about their performance. For example, if there was a pitcher who, at this stage in the season, was sporting an ERA upwards of 6.00, would you say he was finished? Probably not. What if he had a FIP or other defense-independent ERA retrodictor that had him [...]

The Marlins went into the series with the Washington Nationals after a disastrous bullpen performance blew two games against the St. Louis Cardinals. Expecting a very winnable series versus the Nationals, the Fish were sorely mistaken, as they were handed two straight losses and only salvaged a decent series thanks to the dominant pitching performance of a certain erratic starter. Series Hero: John Buck (0.402 WPA) Series Goat: Chris Coghlan (-0.514 WPA) Impressed by: Anibal Sanchez (7 IP, 0 R, 11 K, 0 BB, 0 HR) Depressed by: Chris Coghlan (14 PA, 1 H, 1 2B, 2 BB, 1 K)

Coming off a disappointing final game of an otherwise tightly-contested four-game set against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Florida Marlins now head back home and set their sights on a pair of NL East foes. To start things off, the Marlins will battle the Washington Nationals, which of course always prompts the Maniac to think the following: “Nothing gets you feeling better as a Marlins fan than a set of games against the Nationals.” Hopefully, that trend continues starting tonight with our weekly (hopefully again) Marlin Maniac Live Game Chat featured game. Washington Nationals (14-17) @ Florida Marlins, May 6-8, [...]

Marlin Maniac Live Game Chat, Washington Nationals

The Florida Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals were entrenched in a hard-fought four-game series in which many runs were scored yet few runs decided the outcome of the games. The Fish and Cardinals split the series after closely splitting the run scoring, with the Cards getting a slight 25-21 edge in runs. Many of the games came down to bullpen management and performance along with some late-game heroics on either side. This is part of the reason why the final game ended so disappointingly for the Fish, who had a realistic shot at taking three of four games from the [...]

Reader Isiah responded to my post regarding Mike Stanton and his improvement with a very positive take on Stanton and a slightly negative take in comparison on Jason Heyward, the outstanding second-year outfielder for the Atlanta Braves. With Logan Morrison also playing extremely well, I figured it would be a good time to take a look at a comparison of the three players who were part of an outstanding class of top rookies to debut in 2010. Player PA AVG OBP SLG wOBA fWAR rWAR Stanton 495 .258 .329 .511 .361 3.4 3.4 Morrison 353 .291 .397 .482 .385 2.2 [...]

Yesteday I discussed Javier Vazquez‘s performance over the last few weeks of his 2011 season. I attacked Vazquez’s season in terms of his performance versus right-handers only, but it seems like his split versus righties just is not as awful as his play versus left-handers has been this season. This seems to be a problem that has extended to the 2010 season with the New York Yankees as well, so it may be worth mentioning. To that end, I decided to take a look at the same information that I doled out yesterday with regards to Vazquez’s pitches this season [...]

Good afternoon, fellow Maniacs! Now that Marlins Diehards has joined in on the fun of linking others, I had better get my stuff out in a hurry. Here are the week’s best Marlins-related reads for your viewing pleasure. – Josh Johnson is the National League Pitcher of the Month for April. In other news, the sky is blue. – Tim Elfrink of the Miami New Times has an in-depth look at why the Marlins’ new stadium deal is filled with lies. I’ve never been a proponent of the new stadium deal and how it swindled Miami-Dade county, especially in light [...]

Remember on April 17, when Mike Stanton went one-for-four with two strikeouts and Edwin Rodriguez sent him down in the order in favor of Gaby Sanchez in the cleanup spot? No offense to Sanchez, who is hitting pretty well (but just .245/.339/.449 since April 17), but it is almost as if Stanton took that demotion to heart, because he has been devouring pitchers since that time. Since April 17, Stanton is hitting an absurd .304/.407/.674, including four homers and six walks in 54 plate appearances. I chose an admittedly convenient point in Stanton’s season to date to illustrate one thing [...]

On Wednesday, the Marlins are going to send Javier Vazquez to the mound to face the St. Louis Cardinals for the third game of the four-game series. Vazquez has been a point of contention among Marlins fans because of his questionable (at best) performance to start the season. Marlins fans are more than interested in finding out what we should expect to see from Vazquez going forward. To that end, I figured I’d compile some of the Pitch f/x data for Vazquez and put it up as a visualization for Marlin Maniac readers here. In addition, I’d add some of [...]