Recently, Tom Tango posted a methodology that allows you convert player performance via WPA or WAR into player win/loss records. When he encouraged us to go ahead and do this for our own favorite teams, I immediately thought of the 2003 Marlins, so I figured I’d go ahead and make this part of Revisiting ‘03.
Essentially, this methodology is a way to break down player contributions in terms of wins and losses. Using WPA ensures that you get the entire team total to add up to the team’s win-loss record, but then you cannot adjust for things like position and defense, [...]

Revisiting ‘03 will go back to reviewing some of the seasons of individual Marlins players, but I also wanted to go through the season and tell the story of 2003 with the sabermetric lens. I wanted to start at the point which I clearly remember, some 10 games after Jack McKeon took over for fired manager Jeff Torborg. At the point when Torborg was fired, the Marlins were 16-22, and since McKeon’s arrival, the team went 3-7 and reached 19-29, ten games under .500.
Of course, the Marlins since that point went 71-42, won the National League Wild Card and eventually [...]

Welcome back to Revisiting ‘03, a series in which we look at the 2003 World Series champion Florida Marlins through my new sabermetric lenses. Today, I wanted to talk about the often ballyhooed cliche of “defense wins championships.”
As of late, defense has gotten more and more important in the eyes of executives who run this game. But back in 2003, defense was perhaps still unappreciated, or at least appreciated in only a qualitative sense. While there were metrics like UZR and Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR) available back in those days, I think few teams considered numbers on defense as [...]

Last week in Revisiting ‘03, we delved into the 2003 season and subsequent career of former young stud pitcher Dontrelle Willis. Willis of course was an integral part of the 2003 World Series winning Florida Marlins, but he was just one part of an excellent five-man rotation that contributed around 15 WAR for the team according to FanGraphs. But of the five regular starters that season, there was always one pitcher that I thought simply did not belong among the group. Whenever I watched the team, I always thought “Man, that guy just shouldn’t be in there, he’s terrible.”
That guy [...]

Welcome back to Revisiting ‘03, a sabermetric look at the amazing 2003 Florida Marlins team that won the World Series. As you can tell from the title, we have but one target for today’s piece, and that man is the D-Train, former Marlins lefty starter Dontrelle Willis. Let’s take a look at that 2003 season and what went right (or wrong) with his career as he went forward. Let’s hop aboard the D-Train once again.

Continuing our Revisiting ‘03 series, today we look at one of the most interesting factors of that 2003 team, a factor that the Marlins’ brass often says it attempts to emulate in their recent team designs. That’s right, today we’re looking at speed.
Now, I’m not a huge proponent of speed as an important aspect of a game plan. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want the team to have good baserunners or that speed isn’t useful, but too often there is an emphasis on speed as if it could replace traditional things such as “not making outs” or “hitting the [...]

Welcome back to Revisiting ‘03, where I look back through my saber-eyes at the 2003 Florida Marlins and see if I gain any more wisdom from that magical team. Today’s topic, a fairly simple one: who was the team’s best player?
Perception
In terms of perception, who do you think the team’s best player was? There were numerous options, as the Marlins were fairly impressive both on offense and on run prevention. By the merit of the team’s runs allowed, you would think it would be a pitcher. Between the team’s pitchers, you would have to think the choice would be either [...]

One of the series’ that I’ve been dying to whip out since I started this blog was a look back into 2003, the Florida Marlins’ second world championship, and view it through my recently acquired sabermetric lenses. Now that the offseason is underway and there are naturally fewer baseball topics to discuss, I’d like to finally be able to introduce the series to you all.
Welcome to Revisiting ‘03: A Sabermetric View of the 2003 World Champion Florida Marlins
Introduction and Overview
Back in 2003, I was a huge Marlins fan, as I am now. But back then, I didn’t have the knowledge [...]