Miami Marlins Series Primer: Marlins Vs Phillies

Here we are, the very last series of the year.

It’s been a long, and at times painful, journey but on Sunday afternoon it will finally come to an end in Philadelphia. Both teams have been eliminated a long time ago so as a fan you should really just be cheering for no one to get hurt.

But it’s still baseball, and it’s still the Miami Marlins, so I’ll probably still tune in.

This will be the Philadelphia Phillies second straight series at home, the last one being a three game sweep over the Mets.

That brought their September record to 9-17, arguably their worst month of the year.

The Fish are playing this series directly after ending up on the wrong end of a three game sweep in the Citrus Series.

It’s now official, Miami has posted a 16-10 record this month, making it their only monthly record above the .500 mark.

There’s been a great deal of hullabaloo about what this means about the true talent of the team, but consider this, even with this hot stretch the Marlins are only seven games better than the Phillies, a team universally recognized as atrocious.

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Top Hitters

Phillies:

Odubel Herrera– He’s a Rule 5 draft pick whose produced 3.5 WAR. With a BABIP of .379 he probably won’t have a season like this ever again but it’s been fun while it lasted.
Ryan Howard– There’s serious questions as to whether Howard will play in this series. If he does he’ll probably strikeout ten times while homering twice. Still I love Ryan Howard. My head is full of great memories watching him kill baseballs. He’s one of the guy’s most responsible for getting me into the sport in the first place. Also he’s hit 23 HR this year so there’s my excuse for putting him on here.
Aaron Altherr– A recent call up Altherr has posted a .250/.349/.500 triple slash in 147 major league plate appearances. Tiny sample size rules are in effect there, but it has been enough to produce 1.6 WAR. Also he won a minor league Gold Glove this year which is neat.

Marlins

Martin Prado– The Captain’s been nothing short of fantastic over the last month, probably the biggest reason for the winning record. Posting an unsustainable .387/.443/.520 slash line while playing very sustainable great defense.
Christian Yelich– .324/.388/.476, these are the numbers we were hoping for from Yelich all year, and he’s finally been producing them over the last month.

Probable Starters

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