With Friday night’s 5-0 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Marlins have lost six straight games, and the lack of hitting is playing a very large part in the recent woes. They say pitching wins championships, but you can’t win if you don’t score any runs.

During the current six-game slide, Miami has tallied a total of six runs. Twice the Marlins scored two runs, and twice they were shut out. The pitching staff has a 3.33 ERA over the same stretch. The kind of stat where you could expect to win a few of those six games.

Miami Manager Ozzie Guillen has already said that he is going to start making some changes, and he started in Friday night’s loss to the Diamondbacks by benching struggling SS Jose Reyes. Reyes is now hitting .205 with only six runs scored in 2012.

Miami managed to hit into as many double plays as hits, in tallying only three singles against Diamondbacks starter Joe Saunders Friday.

The Marlins lineup is littered with struggling hitters. Giancarlo Stanton is hitting .234 with 0 HRs. Hanley Ramirez is hitting .211. John Buck is down to .188. Gaby Sanchez is hitting .231.

“It seems like we’re not having fun. It seems like we worry too much every time we go to the plate. That’s what I worry about a little bit,” Guillen told the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel.

Though it is still relatively early in the season, Guillen needs to do whatever it takes to get the hitters swinging the bats more effectively. Now trailing the division-leading Washington Nationals by 6.5 games, only San Diego Padres, and the LA Angels trail by more games behind their respective division leaders. Miami can’t afford to fall too far behind in the toughest division in the NL.

Speaking of the Angels, aren’t you glad that the Marlins didn’t sign the suddenly miserable Albert Pujols this offseason? That 10-year, $240 million contract could have been causing Marlins management fits, and wondering how it all went wrong in the offseason.

For the season, the Fish are now hitting .226. That anemic total bests only the Padres, and Pittsburgh Pirates. Only the Nationals have been able to get away with a struggling offense this season, and that is because their pitching has been stunningly lights out in April with a team 2.25 ERA for the month. The Marlins’ pitching staff ranks sixth in the NL with a 3.37 ERA. That is plenty good enough to be a contender – as long as you have at least some hitting to go along with the pitching.

Not to say the pitching has been perfect. The starters have been solid, as expected. The 8th and 9th innings, however, are a particular weak point for Miami pitching, as the team now sports a 4.78 ERA in the crucial 8th and 9th innings. Heath Bell, signed in the off-season as a free agent to be the Marlins’ closer, has three blown saves (to go along with two saves), and a 9.53 ERA.

Even if the hitting gets turned around, the Fish will need to be more consistent on the mound late in games, and hold whatever leads they are handed with the game on the line.

It isn’t too late to fix what ails the Marlins, but if these problems linger a couple of weeks into May, it will prove a very difficult task to climb into playoff contention in September.

The buzz around Marlins baseball is the best I have ever heard it being. ESPN, MLB Network, and many other media outlets are high on the Marlins chances. We have spent a long off-season discussing all the Marlins move. We analyzed all spring training about the Marlins chances. Now is our opportunity to see this team in action.

This is a special moment for all Marlins fans. Lets get the 2012 season started with a preview for opening day! I am going to use the same template that Michael Jong had in his time at Marlin Maniac in the past for a series preview. Expect one to be up Thursday morning for the Miami Marlins/Cincinnati Reds series.

St. Louis Cardinals (0-0) @ Miami Marlins, April 4 Game #1

NL East Standings

Stadium: Marlins Park

Five-year Run PF*: N/A
Five-year HR PF*: N/A
Stadium Dimensions:
Left field line—340 ft.
Left-center field—384 ft.
Center field—416 ft.
Right-center field—392 ft.
Right field line—335 ft.

*Five-year regressed park factors provided by Patriot here (more…)

In Buehrle, the Marlins did add what they have been missing since they traded Dontrelle Willis left after 2007: a lefty starter who can go 200 innings without much of a problem.

March 31, 2012; Jupiter, FL, USA; Miami Marlins starting pitcher Mark Buehrle (56) pitches during a spring training game against the New York Mets at Roger Dean Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-US PRESSWIRE

Although Buehrle is not known as an overpowering pitcher, he has been one of the most consistent pitchers in baseball for the past decade. Buehrle will essentially be the replacement pitcher for Javier Vazquez, who has retired (unofficially). Here is a look at Buehrle’s stats over the past two seasons and his career.

The consistency in his stats are obvious. In the last three years, Buehrle has not seemed like he lost much despite losing almost two percentage points on his strikeout rate. Over the past three seasons, he has posted a 3.91 ERA and a 4.12 FIP. Those numbers are fairly consistent with his 3.80 ERA and 4.13 FIP from 2000-2008.

Two things that should help Buehrle as he ages over the course of his contract are his switching to a less hitting friendly league and his move from hitter friendly park, to what looks like will be a pitchers park. U.S Cellular Field rivaled Coors Field in extreme home run friendliness. Now Buehrle will be moving to a stadium that is very likely going to suppress home runs.

Buehrle has already done a great job to surpress home runs at home, so even if he improves, it would help him improve his ERA, but it would not be improving by a lot more.

The league average has been 2.4 percent, so if Buehlre can improve on his 2.8 percent at home, he should see an overall improvement in his stats, but still, it will not be by much.

Here is a look at some projections for Mark Buehrle in 2012:

The projections for Buehrle in 2012, to no ones surprise, are a lot like his stats throughout his career. As a soft tossing left handed pitcher, Buehrle will not be affected much by a loss of velocity. He depends more on locating his pitches for strikes and working quickly to keep the hitters off balance. If he can continue to do so, he will be able to post consistent numbers throughout his contracts tenure in Miami. If not, he will still likely be a very reliable pitcher for at least two more seasons before he starts to see a massive decline.

ZiPS is the most optimistic about Buehlre’s stats in 2012, but at the same time, they only project him to go 178 innings. Te Fans of Fangraphs are the only ones projecting 200+ innings from Buehrle. I am in agreement with them. The Marlins are going to need 200 innings from Buehrle in order for them to get their moneys worth and be contenders.

Here is a look at my projections for the crafty lefty.

I have Mark Buehrle as a 2.5 WAR player. My projections fall right into line with the projections of the three systems above. The Marlins would be more then happy to get this type of production from Buehrle, especially if Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez can stay healthy. With these three, the Marlins have a solid trio of starters.

Mark Buehrle would need to have this type of production for all four years of his contract for it to be worth the money the Marlins paid. But the Marlins will surely be happy with this type of production in 2012 and worry about the future later.

March 31, 2012; Jupiter, FL, USA; Miami Marlins starting pitcher Mark Buehrle (56) pitches during a spring training game against the New York Mets at Roger Dean Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-US PRESSWIRE

Tomorrow we will take a look at the Marlins two most unpredictable players, Ricky Nolasco and Carlos Zambrano.

March 11, 2012; Port St Lucie, FL, USA; Florida Marlins first baseman

I come from the pre-Moneyball era, back when batting average and ERA ruled the earth, and one’s skill at rubbing sticks together determined one’s comfort level across a cold winter.  The days when a duplicate baseball card and a clothespin meant a new noisemaker for the Schwinn. Free agency was still pretty new, and the idea of following an individual player over your hometown team was in its infancy.

As I was forming my lifetime bond with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Walt Alston was at the helm, and the Durable Dodgers were packing the seats in Chavez Ravine. Three time zones away, Bill James was wearing out his first shirt pocket pen protector as he fomented revolution.  My family moved East, I grew up, the Sabremetrics gospel spread like wildfire, and I missed it.

An offshoot (sect?) of Sabremetrics is fantasy sports. For the last few years, I’ve been looking in from the fringes, feeling like the Little Match Girl watching the holiday feast from the frozen streets of Dickens’ London.  Like so many things that I’ve been doing with baseball lately, my 10-year-old son is the instigator.  He and I sat down with a couple of primer texts, and started looking at what it would take to run a team for a season.

We settled on the ESPN system, and decided that for the first year, we’d stick to a simple rotisserie league.  Once we had the basics figured out, we ran a couple of mock drafts for practice.  This weekend was my son’s first out-of-town tournament, and we had a couple of hotel nights free from honey-do’s and homework. Draft time.

In between breathless reports on the progress of “elevator tag” and trips to the pool (close your eyes and picture a hotel full of ‘tween boys on a road trip), we made our picks. For good or for bad, our team has the following roster:

P: Stephen Strasburg

P: Yu Darvish

P: Gio Gonzalez

P: Anibal Sanchez

P: Jaime Garcia

Bullpen: Ryan Dempster

Bullpen: Ricky Nolasco

Bullpen: Kenley Jansen

Closer: Craig Kimbrel

Closer: Ryan Madson

C: Wilson Ramos

1B: Albert Pujols

2B: Rickie Weeks

3B: Adrian Beltre

SS: Elvis Andrus

RF: Giancarlo Stanton

CF: Cameron Maybin

LF: Logan Morrison

Utility: Erick Aybar

Utility: Sean Rodriguez

Utility: Emilio Bonifacio

Bench: Gaby Sanchez

Bench: Jarrod Saltalamacchia

Bench: Jason Heyward

Bench: Torii Hunter

Like I said…for good or for bad.  Almost as soon as the draft finished, I read that Madson was out for the season for a Tommy John (I remember watching Tommy pitch).  And if being kidnapped and held for ransom wasn’t bad enough, Ramos is day-to-day with a bum knee.  So are Stanton and Morrison, as we Fish Fans are well aware.

So, right out of the gate, we dropped Madson and picked up Aroldis Chapman out of the undrafted players pool.  We’ll see how it works out.

We weren’t drafting from an array of analyses and spreadsheets.  We used a combination of the USA Today fantasy preview, ESPN’s in-draft rankings, and our own gut and emotion.  We’ll see how the “shoot and holler ‘Boo’” draft method works over 162 games.

I’ll be watching three things this year: first is the attention span of a fifth-grader over a season. Second is the attention span of a 47-year-old over a season. Finally, I’d like to see how we do against the other nine guys in our league.

• Starting Pitching
• Bullpen
• Who should lead off?
• Meet Giancarlo Stanton
• Catcher
• First Base
• Second Base
• Third Base
• Shortstop
• Left Field
• Center Field