Grading the Marlins: Miami Wins 1-of-3 Against Bucs

The Miami Marlins defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-2 on Friday, then dropped a 1-0 squeaker on Saturday. On Sunday, the Pirates took the series with a decisive 7-3 victory.

I used the Wins Probability Added metric (WPA) to help ascertain which players performed better (or worse) in the higher leverage situations. In other words, if the Miami Marlins are winning, 6-0, a plate appearance doesn’t count as much. Conversely, an at bat with two on and two out in the bottom of the 13th has a very high leverage.

There’s something else you need to understand about WPA. Every game has a collective WPA of zero. The winning team will finish with a total of .50, and the losing team will have -.50. As such, it’s not a great predictor of future performance. What it can tell you is which players performed best when the chips were down.

In the last week, outfielder Braxton Lee was sent down to the New Orleans Baby Cakes. JB Shuck was called up to fill his spot on the roster. In addition, J.T. Realmuto and Dan Straily made rehab starts with the Jupiter Hammerheads.

This article will take a look at how the 20 Miami players performed in the series. We will start with the top, and work our way to the bottom. For comparison’s sake, I’ll list the Pirates and their WPA overall values for the series.

Elias Diaz +.320

Jameson Taillon +.268

Josh Bell +.246

Corey Dickerson +.235

Felipe Vazquez +.213

George Kontos +.155

Starling Marte +.127

Michael Feliz +.096

Ivan Nova +.092

Francisco Cervelli +.062

Kyle Crick -.002

David Freese -.006

Sean Rodriguez -.027

Dovydas Neverauskas -.038

Adam Frazier -.102

Colin Moran -.142

Josh Harrison -.152

Jordy Mercer -.190

Gregory Polanco -.266

Chad Kuhl -.390