A Look at Miami Marlins Predictions from ESPN, Fangraphs, and Call to the Pen

It is a lot of fun to look at predictions at this time of the season. We have already made our projections here on Marlin Maniac. Now I want to go around the web and look at some interesting predictions from all around the baseball world. Today I want to bring you guys the predictions for the Miami Marlins from ESPN “experts,” Fangraphs, and from our own Call to the Pen.

ESPN:

Before I get onto the real analysts on ESPN, I thought I would pass this tweet by Skip Bayless along. As a Marlins fan, him picking us to win it all is a scary proposition. But then again, he did pick the Miami Heat to win it all this season. So if both happen, I guess I am willing to give him a pass for being such a joke on ESPN Firstake.

I am not going to give all the picks from ESPN, as they have about a billion writers. But I can tell you 30 analysts picked the Marlins to make the playoffs. Here is an overview of how they have the Marlins making the playoffs:

Winning Division: 11 ESPN analysts have us winning our division.

Wild Card: The remaining 19 ESPN analysts that have us in the playoffs are predicting the Marlins to win another wild card. Whether we get passed the 1-game wild card is not mentioned.

One guy has us making the World Series and losing to the Tampa Bay Rays in an all Florida World Series.


Javier Maymi, ESPN Deportes	East champ: Rays Central champ: Tigers West champ: Rangers Wild cards: Angels, Yankees Champion: Rays	East champ: Marlins Central champ: Cardinals West champ: Diamondbacks Wild cards: Braves, Giants Champion: Marlins

WORLD SERIES: Rays over Marlins

That is all the predictions we will look at from ESPN. I hope that Javier Maymi is correct with his predictions, of course with the Marlins winning instead of the Rays!

Fangraphs:

Author	NL West	NL Central	NL East	NL WC #1	NL WC #2	NL Champ
Ben Duronio	ARZ	CIN	PHI	ATL	STL	ARZ
Bill Petti	ARZ	CIN	PHI	MIL	STL	CIN
Bradley Woodrum	ARZ	STL	PHI	MIL	MIA	PHI
Brandon Warne	ARZ	CIN	PHI	STL	WAS	ARZ
Chad Young	SF	STL	PHI	CIN	WAS	CIN
Chris Benson	ARZ	STL	MIA	PHI	CIN	ARZ
Chris Cwik	ARZ	CIN	PHI	MIL	WAS	ARZ
Dan Wade	ARZ	CIN	PHI	MIL	MIA	ARZ
Dave Cameron	ARZ	CIN	PHI	MIA	STL	MIA
David Laurila	SF	CIN	PHI	ATL	MIL	CIN
Eno Sarris	SF	CIN	PHI	ATL	ARZ	ATL
Jeff Zimmerman	COL	MIL	PHI	ATL	WAS	PHI
Jesse Wolfersberger	ARZ	STL	PHI	ATL	CIN	PHI
Marc Hulet	SD	CIN	PHI	ATL	ARZ	PHI
Mike Axisa	ARZ	MIL	PHI	STL	LAD	MIL
Mike Petriello	ARZ	CIN	PHI	MIA	MIL	CIN
Paul Swydan	ARZ	STL	WAS	ATL	CIN	ARZ
Ryan Campbell	ARZ	MIL	PHI	ATL	CIN	PHI
Wendy Thurm	ARZ	MIL	PHI	MIA	SF	ARZ
Zach Sanders	ARZ	STL	WAS	MIL	MIA	MIL

Fangraphs is one of the sites that I visit the most when I am on the internet. Dave Cameron has always been one of my favorite writers over there. I think I like him even more now. He has the Marlins going to the World Series, like Skip Bayless, but he has us losing to the Texas Rangers.

Here is Cameron on picking the Marlins:

"And yes, that’s me picking the Marlins to go to the World Series. Commence tomato throwing now."

Of the 20 Fangraphs writers listed here, only 7 of them have us making it to the World Series. Only Chris Benson has us winning our division, and of course Cameron is the only guy picking us to make the World Series.

Not bad at all predictions made by the cast at Fangraphs. Hopefully the Marlins can prove most of them wrong!

Call to the Pen:

Of the 10 writers over on Call to the Pen, only 3 of them have the Marlins winning the wild card. None of them have the Marlins winning the division or the NL Pennant. Two of them have Ozzie Guillen winning manager of the year. Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Reyes each got one MVP vote.

I would post their table here with the Call to the Pen’s predictions, but it is way too large to fit it into this post. Go ahead and check out the site for yourself. They have complete opening day coverage for 2012.

Go ahead and check them out to get analysis on all 30 Major League baseball teams and their season previews.

Wahoos on First:

Lewie Pollis of Wahoos on First recently took on a goal to create a crowdsourced power ranking list for the coming year. He asked members of Fansided MLB team to power rank the MLB teams. The results are in and this is how they look:

Texas Rangers—338 (1 first-place vote)
New York Yankees—334 (5)
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—325 (2)
Detroit Tigers—319 (4)
Philadelphia Phillies—312
Tampa Bay Rays—300
Boston Red Sox—294
St. Louis Cardinals—257
Atlanta Braves—240
Miami Marlins—240
San Francisco Giants—239
Arizona Diamondbacks—237
Cincinnati Reds—230
Milwaukee Brewers—212
Toronto Blue Jays—200
Washington Nationals—197
Colorado Rockies—164
Cleveland Indians—140
Kansas City Royals—134
Los Angeles Dodgers—128
Chicago White Sox—104
Minnesota Twins—102
Pittsburgh Pirates—102
Oakland Athletics—82
San Diego Padres—78
Seattle Mariners—75
Chicago Cubs—70
New York Mets—67
Baltimore Orioles—42
Houston Astros—13

According to the power rankings, the Marlins are right where I would project them to be around, for now. The Marlins can easily move up if they can win ball games, and will move down if they start to lose. For now, they are in a perfect spot for themselves.

After doing all that, this is the projected standing that Lewie was able to come up with.

(playoff teams in bold, wild card winners in italics)

By virtue of the power rankings, the Marlins are the tenth best team in baseball, as well as the fifth best team in the National League. That is good enough for the second wild card as well as a one game playoff series with the Atlanta Braves for the chance to play the Philadelphia Phillies in a 5-game series in the NLDS.

Hope you guys enjoyed all the predictions. I have one last item in store for you guys before Opening Day arrives. Be sure to check back on that.

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