How the Marlins Will Finish in the Playoff Race (in 2020)

Over at Fangraphs, they have a lot of little toys for predicting the future.

One such toy is the “Steamer” projections. To understand Steamer, you need to understand WAR.

It’s common knowledge that WAR stands for “Wins Above Replacement.” A replacement level player is one such that, if a team is comprised entirely of such players, they’ll win 29.4 percent of their games, or 47.628 wins. That translates to a 48-114 season.

When you dig into the more advanced mathematical aspect of it, you need to realize that there are 2,430 games played every major league season, and each of those games will have a winner and a loser. The “average” team will be 81-81. In other words, if you divide every team’s record by 162, the average will in fact, be 81-81.

Since 81-minus-47.628 is 33.372, and there are 30 teams, that’s 1001 WAR available for the entire major leagues, but I’m sure “they” meant to divvy out exactly 1000.

So a team that projects to be an “actual” 48-114 club will have a WAR projection of roughly zero, and a .500 club will have somewhere around 33.3 WAR. Incidentally, and the reasoning for this article in fact, the Marlins project as a team with 9.0 WAR from their fielders and 10.6 pitching WAR – a total of 19.6 WAR.

19.6 wins above 47.6 wins is 67.2 wins, or, a 67-95 season projection. Such a season would represent a 10-win improvement from what we hope is the absolute nadir associated with their current spate of growing pains. But can we possibly hope for more? Story continues if you click the banner below.

Pitchers

Steamer really likes Pablo Lopez, for some reason more than any other Marlins pitcher, at 2.2 WAR. I only say that because Sandy Alcantara‘s last two months of 2019 were so sublime, not from any lack of ability on the part of the Doctor. His WAR totals over his first two seasons were 0.4 and 0.5, respectively, but as this is a thought exercise, and more importantly, my thought exercise, I’m going to pick and choose where to ignore my own better judgement. If Steamer is going to be bullish on one or two of our guys, I say let them. I’m only here to correct them when they undervalue our guys, but they don’t really answer to me anyway, right?

Caleb Smith clocks in with a 1.8 WAR projection next year, but Smith is clearly capable of great and mighty things from the pitchers mound. In 28 starts last year, he was at 1.5, so this projection may be pretty close to Smith’s actual output – but they still have to play the games.

Sandy Alcantara, who was clearly Miami’s best pitcher in 2019 despite a 6-14 record, has a projected WAR value of just 1.5. However, after he literally doubled that number last season, with a 3.1 WAR, I’m going to assert he’ll repeat. The Marlins are now at 33.7 WAR – a .500 team.

Jordan Yamamoto is projected by Steamer to take 24 turns in the rotation, and they plugged him in with a 1.1 WAR. In 15 starts last year, he was at 1.0 with a solid 1.144 WHIP, 9.4 K/9, and only 6.2 H/9 allowed. This guy is better than Steamer thinks, and I’m going to say he’ll nearly match Alcantara and award 2.5. Up to 35.1 WAR, the Marlins move to 83-79. Not yet in the playoff picture, but not that far out of it either.

Elieser Hernandez pitched to a solid 1.239 WHIP in 2019, but also clocked in with a 5.58 FIP. Steamer says he’ll be worth 1.0 WAR, so we’ll just go with that.

Jarlin Garcia is rated with a -0.1 WAR, but he pitched to a 1.105 WHIP and only 7.1 H/9 in 2019, and was worth 1.3 WAR. Let’s say he repeats that. We’re now sitting pretty with 36.5 WAR, or at 84-78.

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The rest of the staff projects as such:

Jose Urena 0.9
Ryne Stanek 0.7
Robert Dugger 0.2
Sixto Sanchez 0.2
Sterling Sharp 0.2
Jeff Brigham 0.2
Nick Neidert 0.1
Kyle Keller 0.1
Drew Steckenrider 0.1
Austin Brice 0.1
Yimi Garcia 0.1 (0.5)
Adam Conley 0.1
Brian Moran 0.1
Jose Quijada 0.0
Alex Vesia 0.0

As this was a thought exercise, I think I need to state that a lot needs to go right for this to actually come to fruition. I didn’t very much account for possible injuries to the principle components of this calculation. That being said, an 85-77 record puts the Marlins in the conversation in an already pretty tough National League East.

Disagree? Let me know about it in the comments, or come over and let’s talk on Twitter, where everyone loves the Marlins