Giancarlo Stanton hits his 17th home run of the season, this one travels 456 feet. (Image: Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE)

Currently, Omar Infante is the only Marlins positional player that has earned enough votes to be among the leaders at his position. That is a very pathetic showing from Marlins fans. Here is a look at the voting, as of yesterday.

Even without the fan voting, Stanton has a decent shot of making the team. It is very unlikely that Stanton’s peers and coaches around baseball will ignore his talents, like the fans have thus far. Though, if they choose to ignore him as well, we can still see him in the home run derby.

Stanton will have a chance to put his power on national display in the Home Run Derby in Kansas City on July 9. Hopefully the rest of the fans of the MLB take note, as going forward, Stanton should be a perennial starter in the game.

“We’re in there,” Stanton confirmed to Marlins beat writers before taking part in B.P today.

The Marlins have lost 11 of their 15 games that they have played this month. The team is currently sitting at the .500 mark at 33 and 33. Fortunately, the Marlins still only trail the division leading Washington Nationals by 6 games. I know, with the Marlins have played as of late, that six game deficit looks bigger then it should.

Tonight, the Marlins will be in Boston to take on the Red Sox, for the second time this season. The Red Sox won two out of the three games in Miami. It’s been a struggle, but if you are looking for a sliver lining, the Marlins, during their slump, played their best baseball against the Boston Red Sox. Yes, they were outscored 13-7 in that series, but they were in the final two games, but the last one got away in the eight inning.

The Marlins are only a hot week or two from jumping right back into the thick of the National East race. They can start by winning this series and returning home to start a winning streak.

The key to winning for the Marlins, get some runners across this base right here.

Stadium: Fenway Park

April 20, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; The score board on the green monster with details about the 100th anniversary celebration before the game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees at Fenway Park. (Image: Greg M. Cooper-US PRESSWIRE)

Five-year Run PF*: N/A
Five-year HR PF*: N/A
Stadium Dimensions:
Left field line—315 ft.
Left-center field—379 ft.
Center field—420 ft.
Right-center field—380 ft.
Right field line—302 ft.

*Five-year regressed park factors provided by Patriot here

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June 11, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Marlins starting pitcher Josh Johnson (55) throws during the first inning against the Boston Red Sox at Marlins Park. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

Sometimes, when you’re stuck in the middle of the wrong kind of streak, you start thinking about what you can do to shake the curse. Think of the lengths that caddy Romeo Posar (Cheech Marin)went to to shake up Roy McAvoy (Kevin Costner) in Tin Cup; moving his loose change to the other pocket, etc. Ultimately, what Cup had to do was relax and clear his mind.

Maybe opening the roof last night was the trick.  Maybe Josh Johnson channeled Nuke LaLoosh and was wearing his girlfriend’s garter belt under his uni. Most likely, however, is that he was able to relax and trust his arm and his mechanics.

Either way, he had an outstanding performance last night, limiting the visiting Red Sox to one run in seven innings.  Giving up one earned run and one walk, he fanned seven, moving his ERA to 4.27 for the season. His fastball was on the high side of his average, tapping 95, and with good movement.

Fortunately, he had run support early in the game.  A leadoff triple from Jose Reyes and a sac. fly from Donovan Solano started a three-run first inning when Reyes scored.  Giancarlo Stanton looped a Texas-Leaguer to center field, followed by Logan Morrison belting a line drive to right field. Heads-up baserunning from Giancarlo Stanton tallied the second run on an Adrian Gonzalez bobble. Morrison crossed the plate on a right-field single by Gaby Sanchez.

John Buck opened the second inning with a single, and was sacrificed over to third by Josh Johnson and Jose Reyes. A base hit by Donovan Solano drove in the fourth and final run for the Marlins.

After the early-inning shelling, Josh Beckett demonstrated his precise, consistent pitching to hold the Fish to the four runs from the first two innings, ending his outing with three earned runs, one walk and five strikeouts after seven innings.

The Marlins sent in Steve Cishek for a scoreless eighth.  He retired the first two batters before giving up a base hit to Scott Podsednik, and ended the inning on a soft grounder from Dustin Pedroia.  Heath Bell came in for the ninth-inning save, his thirteenth of the season.   Despite a leadoff walk to Adrian Gonzalez, Bell struck out the next three batters: David Ortiz, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Kevin Youkilis. Game over.

This afternoon, left-hander Clay Buchholz squares off against righty Mark Buehrle. Buchholz brings a 6-2 record with a 5.77 ERA to Buehrle’s 5-6, 3.49 record. With the six-loss streak put to bed and behind them, the Marlins should be fired up and ready to put the bats to work.

Prediction: 6-2 Marlins, with no Red Sox runs after the third inning. Also, the home run feature will light up for either Hanley Ramirez or Giancarlo Stanton (although it would  be nice to see Gaby notch a “welcome home” dinger).

If you don’t hit, you can’t win.

Elementary really, so it isn’t some grand sabermetric discovery. Then again, I didn’t really need Hit f/x or anything like that to tell you the Marlins offense was atrocious tonight. What made it especially frustrating was the fact that Brad Penny was more than hittable. His fastball was definitely working, with 95-98 MPH heat throughout his innings. But he wasn’t placing pitches particularly well and there was a good set of pitches that were out there to be hit. Look at his pitch type strike zone, again courtesy of Brooks Baseball.

It’s difficult to see at the size I have it, but it’s simple to tell that:

1) There were a good amount of belt- and thigh-high fastballs the Marlins could have driven.
2) Penny hung a huge amount of curveballs middle and high in the zone.

Yet the Marlins eked out, from my count, approximately four hard hit balls, one of which ended as Jorge Cantu’s two-bag error that drove in the team’s only run. Two others were doubles by Ross Gload and John Baker, but the team never capitalized.

This chart shows graphically the patient approach the Marlins were taking with Penny. The Fish whiffed only five times and only once outside the generalized strike zone. While they did also foul off one or two pitches outside the zone, for the most part the team stayed disciplined and swung at strikes. But all this hard work was for naught, as the team only turned four of those juicy pitches located middle and mid-high into bases. A frustrating evening to be sure.

Andrew Miller had some bad breaks.

In contrast, let’s take a look at Andrew Miller’s night out.

Pitch f/x was all over the place with regards to the types of pitches it was seeing, but as we know, Miller has a three-pitch arsenal: fastball, slider, changeup. Tonight, he was having some decent success with the changeup, throwing it 55% of the time for strikes and placing it where it would be difficult to hit, typically problems for Miller. In general he was able to keep the ball down, a stark contrast to Chris Volstad’s erratic outing. Miller was able to get five swinging strikes outside of the zone, primarily with the fastball, which was ranging from 92-95 MPH and occasionally touching the high 90′s.

So if all of that good was working, how come he gave up four runs? Two major things contributed to the run scoring against Miller:

1) He was missing the zone a lot, mostly down. Can’t blame him too much though, as he was getting squeezed in the strike zone (more on that later).
2) He was getting really unlucky. A lot of soft hit balls found their way through the infield, into holes in the outfield defense, and other inaccessible areas. Some of that is our defense, some of that was just plain bad luck.

I can’t be too disappointed in Miller’s performance. He struck out six while walking four, right around his average performance, but as I mentioned he was being squeezed pretty bad down in the zone. He was getting whiffs with his pitches and showing better command on his changeup, a key to making him a solid starter. As a Marlins fan, you hope a better strike zone can make his numbers look better.

The strike zone seemed way off.

As I watched the game, I noticed some awkward stuff about the strike zone home plate umpire Jerry Crawford was calling. In particular, the one consistent thing I saw was a lack of a knee-high strike, made particularly obvious because Miller was living in that area of the typical strike zone. Normally, I’d be pretty happy to see a pitcher working down consistently like that, but take a look at the strikezone plot for both teams.

My suspicion during the game seemed correct; Crawford was definitely tightening up the bottom of the zone and not giving out the knee-high strike. But Penny was everywhere, so it didn’t hurt him nearly as much. But there are a lot of little green triangles on there representing the Marlins’ pitchers, and particularly Miller. Getting squeezed there really hurt his game plan, as it forced him to go a little higher in the zone or risk walking more men. He chose the latter and got burned by a few untimely lucky hits.

The other oddity I spotted was this.

There were a lot of red marks indicating Boston strikes called off of the inner half of the plate to left handers. Miller seemed to miss by much more to that side, and in addition faced significantly fewer left handers than Boston did; the Marlins trotted out Chris Coghlan, Ross Gload, Jeremy Hermida, and the switch-hitting Emilio Bonifacio, while the left side for Boston was populated by Jacoby Ellsbury and David Ortiz only.

I didn’t notice this in-game, but it makes me particularly mad. When the umps don’t call an even strikezone for both teams, it’s hard to gauge what types of pitches and locations should be used to get hitters out. These sorts of thing can really affect a pitcher’s performance, and aren’t usually seen through the box score stats. Just looking at the box score, I would have said Miller had a difficult struggle, but using the Pitch f/x data and some observation, you can tell he was really more in the strike zone than it was called. Combine that with some bad luck and you can get the makings of a poor performance.

The opposite went for Penny and the Sox starters. They got to take advantage of a fairly consistently called “bad” strike. I know Pitch f/x normalizes the strike zone, so the real zone is more hitter dependent, but those sort of bad calls can get players into chasing pitches that are far worse. It all stinks of just a forgettable evening for the Fish.