Miami Marlins RTD: If You Were Marlins Man for the Day; Ultimate Marlins Player

Dec 9, 2013; Orlando, FL, USA; Jarrod Saltalamacchia (center) is introduced by Miami Marlins director of baseball operations Michael Hill (left) and general manager Dan Jennings (right) during the MLB Winter Meetings at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. Mandatory Credit: David Manning-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to another Miami Marlins Round Table Discussion. On today’s agenda, we’ll be discussing if we believe if the Miami Marlins will truly use analytics in 2016, what we would do as Marlins Man for the day, and combining Marlins skills to make a perfect player.

In today’s RTD, we have special guest and friend to Marlin Maniac, Jay Ramos. He’s better known as @Jay_Ram_ on Twitter. We’ll have a special guest, sometimes some of our readers, every week to discuss the Marlins with us this off-season!

1. Do you believe the idea that the Miami Marlins are actually going to invest in an analytic department and then also use that to help make their baseball decisions?

Ehsan Kassim: The Marlins franchise paid lip service for the longest time about building a team around pitching and defense. They finally delivered on the defense part last season, but the pitching was absent. Likewise, they’ll pay lip service to the analytics department, but not actually listen to them for advice. And I agree with Jay, I’d like to call Loria out to start fixing the franchise for the better.

Daniel Zylberkan: No. All of the signs coming out of management and the media point to the fact that they still don’t quite understand what analytics is and how they are actually supposed to be used for making baseball decisions. They keep saying things like “we will use them but we won’t be completely dependent on them” as though the Athletics or Pirates fired all of their scouts and they have some fancy computer program and a set of algorithms watching baseball games.

Michael Sonbeek: Yes, they will invest in the department. And between now and Opening Day, it will factor heavily into decision making. However, Jeffrey Loria will still be the ultimate authority, and will likely discount what the metrics say at the first sign of difficulty. It’s also entirely likely the undermining will begin with whoever is tapped as the next manager of the franchise- again, an instance of the owner gumming up the works. 

Sean Millerick: Yes, they will invest in the department. And between now and Opening Day, it will factor heavily into decision-making. However, Jeffrey Loria will still be the ultimate authority, and will likely discount what the metrics say at the first sign of difficulty. It’s also entirely likely the undermining will begin with whoever is tapped as the next manager of the franchise- again, an instance of the owner gumming up the works. 

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Mark Laming: Should they? Absolutely. Are they going to? Probably not. Several reporters have stated that certain members of the front office have grown close with Loria, therefore creating a situation where there is reasonable bias. It’s also worth mentioning, the team has consistently ignored these developments and there won’t be much change.

Jay Ramos: Nah. It’s not about the raw data. It’s about the critical thinking required from the people influencing decisions to apply it. To be real about this, they don’t even need to make a department to use advanced statistics in the first place.

In general, and I don’t have a statistic to back this, I think middle-aged, tenured men in positions like Mike Hill and Dan Jennings don’t seem like great candidates to greatly alter their current limited ways of evaluating baseball.

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