Miami Marlins: Four Difference Makers Against the Yankees

There was a movie a few years ago called “Any Given Sunday.” In that movie, Al Pacino taught us that in a professional sporting match, any team can match up with any team on “any given Sunday.”

This statement proved true for the Miami Marlins, but it was on a Tuesday.

In Tuesday’s game, the Miami Marlins earned a measure of revenge against the Bronx Bombers with a 9-1 victory. This, one day after getting sandblasted with a 12-1 setback.

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. It doesn’t matter if the two teams combine for 50 runs or it finishes at 1-0, the WPA will still add up to zero. Also of interest, if two clubs split a two game series, each team’s individual WAR will also be a collective zero. At the end of a 162 season, in fact, an 81-81 club will have a mark of, you guessed it, zero.

WPA is not a great predictor of future performance. What it can tell you is which players performed best when the chips were down. As such, it’s a great metric for telling the story of one ballgame, or in this setting, one series. In these games, blowouts both, an early inning plate appearance, when the game was close, is worth much more than a plate appearance near the end. That’s why you’ll find Didi Gregorius, with his two-homer performance on Monday, pretty far down the list. That’s because his home runs were hit after the contest was pretty much decided.

Since the series between the Miami Marlins and the New York Yankees started, catcher J.T. Realmuto has been activated and catcher Chad Wallach was optioned to the New Orleans Baby Cakes.

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 Yankees and their WPA overall values for the series.

Aaron Judge +.211

Luis Severino +.185

Brett Gardner +.061

Gary Sanchez +.054

Tyler Austin +.043

Luis Cessa +.002

Adam Warren +.001

Chasen Shreve –

Dellin Betances –

Jace Peterson –

Chade Green –

David Robertson –

Aaron Hicks -.014

Didi Gregorius -.022

Ronald Torreyes -.036

Neil Walker -.042

Miguel Andujar -.053

Giancarlo Stanton -.089

Masahiro Tanaka -.301