Miami Marlins: Value and Roster Construction

Sep 30, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; Miami Marlins starting pitcher Jarred Cosart (23) is taken out of the game by manager Dan Jennings (26) during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Value, Trades and Depth

The Mike Hill-Dan Jennings era has made it plain that they have no conception of what value is and how to maximize the value of their organizational depth.

In short the series of trades made between the trade deadline in 2014 and the winter of 2015 made it clearly obvious that Marlins didn’t know when they had a good thing. They threw it all away for a pieces that add up to less than what they gave up. As senior editor Ehsan Kassim pointed out in his 3 moves that sunk the Miami Marlins in 2015 and beyond.

Take for example the Jarred Cosart trade.

The Marlins have in him a marginal back of the rotation guy, that in parts of two season in the Majors has never struck more than 6.07 per nine innings. He has an unsustainably high walk rate and is entirely too dependent on controlling the quality of contact and other volatile factors, such as strand rate to be successful.

In 2015 Cosart had a 5.12 FIP and 17.5% HR/FB rate, which in almost 70 innings pitched, yielded him a -0.3 fWAR.

The Marlins gave up Colin Moran and Jake Marisnick, Francis Martes, and the first pick in the competitive balance draft, in order to get Cosart, Enrique Hernandez, and Austin Wates.

Marisnick, who was amongst the outfielder mix in Houston along with Preston Tucker, Colby Rasmus and George Springer, didn’t have a hugely impressive offensive year. He only slashed .236/.281/.383, which added up to a 80 wRC+. However, Marisnick’s value isn’t in his bat. He provided the Astros depth as well as the gold glove caliber defense.

Marisnick had 1.5 ultimate baserunning rating, a 1.1 weighted stolen base rating, and most impressively a 9.3 UZR. That UZR was the eleventh best amongst all outfielders in baseball.

On the back of his baserunning and defense alone had a fWAR of 1.8 (2 fWAR is a league average player).

Now ask yourself wouldn’t the Miami Marlins have been better off with Marisnick instead of either Ichiro Suzuki or Cole Gillespie, for when they need to replace either Stanton or Ozuna like they did this year?

The story is very similar with Colin Moran, who this year at AA with Houston, slashed .306/.381/.459 and had a 10.3% walk rate.

If Prado gets hurt next year or leaves after wouldn’t it be better to have Moran as depth?

The Marlins trying to go all in 2015 was the reason they failed because they gave up all of their depth to attempt to do so.

Next: 2016 Free Agency