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Miami Marlins Morning Catch: Adeiny Hechavarria Snubbed?

By Ehsan Kassim

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Good morning, Marlin Maniac readers and welcome to Morning Catch, the daily morning news and notes column from MarlinManiac.com about your Miami Marlins.

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Dee Gordon and Giancarlo Stanton were named All-Star starters after being voted in by fans on Sunday. On Monday night, no more Miami Marlins were named to the All-Star game. Many Marlins fans felt their favorite team was snubbed two All-Stars, in Adeiny Hechavarria and A.J. Ramos.

That last tweet is far from true. Brandon Crawford on the season owns a 2.9 fWAR, which is in the same neighborhood of Dee Gordon, who was voted in as a starter. While Crawford’s defense does not rate as well as Hechavarria, his offense is on another level compared to Hech’s.

Truthfully, Crawford should have been voted in as the starting short-stop over Jhonny Peralta. If he did, the Miami Marlins short-stop may have held a better argument to get into the game as a reserve.

Peralta has been better than Adeiny on offense this season, but defense has Hech as a 2.1 fWAR player and Peralta comes in at a 1.8 fWAR. The difference in fWAR between the two players is negligible to determine one player better than the other. Peralta likely gets the edge as the better player because offense counting stats are easier to account for than the less reliable defensive numbers.

Marlins News Around the Web:

Justin Bour is scaring pitchers – Justin Perline, Beyond the Box Score

If I were a major league pitcher, I’d be scared to face Justin Bour too. Just one look and you’d be scared your next pitch will be launched into the stands. Bour’s unintentionally menacing frame has caused pitchers to avoid throwing strikes. In fact, he’s seen the lowest percentage of strikes in the MLB this year by a large margin.

Bour’s 37.1 Zone% (a measure of what percentage of pitches thrown are strikes) is far and away the MLB leader, while Eric Hosmer‘s 40.4 percent ranks second among all batters with more than 100 plate appearances. If I were to assemble the Zone% leaders since the introduction of pitchf/x, and therefore the recording of such a statistic, I would have quite the lineup.

Of course, the obvious outlier here is Javier Baez and his 2014 campaign. Pitchers recognized his weakness for chasing pitches out of the zone and took advantage of the rookie’s eagerness, however, every other batter here proved to be a difficult out. Vladimir Guerrero and Pablo Sandoval in particular, appear on this list twice, and even though we now know Sandoval’s secret, he still deserves some applause. (Read More Here)

Examining Jose Fernandez’s return start for the Miami Marlins – Michael Jong, Fishstripes

Jose Fernandez finally made his first start of the season, and the Miami Marlins won in taking the third and final game of a three-game series against the defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants. The Fish had to be happy that the crowd at Marlins Park was lively for an afternoon contest and that Fernandez pitched well enough to help the team win.

The “pitching well” portion is what is most important for Miami going forward. Like it or not, the raw run totals for Fernandez in his five rehab starts were mixed, but he did put up the sort of strikeout values that were expected of him. But the majors are a different ball game, and it was not necessarily easy to predict what might happen against a championship-caliber team like the Giants.

Fernandez still delivered in a big way. (Read More Here)

Miami Marlins Austin Nola Playing for Name on Front and Back of Jersey – David Hill, Grading on the Curve

It is an exciting time for any prospect when they find themselves promoted to AAA. There, just one step away from achieving their lifelong dream of playing in the majors, that goal becomes more than some hope for the future. That last step took place recently for Miami Marlins minor leaguer Austin Nola, as he was promoted to the New Orleans Zephyrs.

Normally, a promotion like this would not be overly notable. Nola is not exactly a top prospect, and produced a .211/.286/.281 batting line. With a total of four home runs and 19 stolen bases in his four year career, paired with a career .234/.331/.303 batting line, Nola is not exactly an intriguing prospect.

However, even with his less than exciting batting line, Nola still became notable this past week. Given the team that he plays for being in New Orleans, Nola has the unique distinction of having his last name on both the front and back of his jersey. (Read More Here)

Just How Good is Dee Gordon? – Howard Cole, Forbes

No one thought Dee Gordon would be this good. Not the Los Angeles Dodgers, certainly, not the forecasters, and likely not even the Miami Marlins. Not this good.

The fleet-of-foot (in another era the term speed merchant would apply) second baseman led baseball in hitting for much of the first half, and currently sports a cool .339/.360/.418 line, with 116 hits, which still paces the sport. He’s second in steals at 29, gets the start in the All-Star Game July 14 at Cincinnati, and by at least one measure, is close to the top in defense for this position.

Gordon’s splits? Well, he hits at home and on the road, against left-hand pitching and right, at night and during the day, while raking in April, May and June. Fine, so he’s 1-13 on turf, the slacker. (Read More Here)

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