Miami Marlins 2016 (Jose Fernandez RIP 9/25/16)

i think stanton would win if voting were held today too. btw he's more or less tied for the NL lead in WAR by fangraphs and B-R and is lapping the field by baseball prospectus

i became convinced over the lsat week that he's gonna win

the marlins have more good hitters than most people realize but the team is hysterical right now... the rotation is like sub-AAA and they're playing guys like mike aviles and tyler moore pretty much every day. he's leading the majors in the WAR over the second half for a team that should prob be nowhere near the playoff discussion in its current state. i think he has a great case.

also been thinking about this article from the offseason. this sorta stuff is everywhere preseason of course, nonetheless... http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18898859/to-grieve-jose-fernandez-death-miami-marlins-giancarlo-stanton-took-life-changing-journey

There has been something different about him this spring, though, that has struck those around him. His team's president of baseball operations, Michael Hill, went so far as to punctuate his review of the 2017 edition of Giancarlo Stanton with three attention-getting letters: M-V-P.

"You'd be smart [to pick him]," Hill says. "There's a focus there that makes you really excited."

Today is Monday, August 28. Let’s go back to May 28 — that’s a nice, clean, even three months. Who’s been the best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s easy. The Dodgers. Everyone knows that. Who’s been the second-best team in baseball over the past three months? That’s less easy.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/here-come-the-marlins-somehow/

51

do they often bat Stanton 2nd?

also he just missed a second tonight, a long sac fly again off Edwin Jackson, which I guess isn't as big an Asterisk Argument as the juiced ball.

As of right now, I would vote for Rendon.

Phil: If Stanton reaches 60+ homers and 7+ WAR, he the likely MVP even if the Marlins don’t reach the playoffs?

Dave Cameron: I don’t know. He’d get votes, but I could still see there being enough “has to be on a winning team” voters combining with “homers aren’t everything” voters to give it to someone else.

apparently the new ownership group's first priority is . . . to dramatically slash payroll

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/barry-jackson/article171093362.html

54

56 now, with ten games to go. including three at Coors and three at Chase.

pitchers on the verge of history

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-marlins-have-something-to-avoid/

Derek Jeter doesn’t even own the Marlins yet, but he already has informed the team that he plans to fire two special assistants who are in Baseball’s Hall of Fame (Andre Dawson and Tony Perez), the manager who led them to the 2003 World Series championship (Jack McKeon) and the player known as Mr. Marlin (Jeff Conine), according to two MLB sources.

And here’s the twist: Jeter asked Marlins president David Samson to fire those four Marlins luminaries for him, because Jeter didn’t want to do it.

gift box joke goes here

past a conniving Jeter

this is going to be an extremely unpopular opinion that i am probably 100% alone in but i don't want giancarlo to hit 61

i know it's extremely normie of me or w/e to even put stock into that number as opposed to bonds' record but i do tend to think of all the steroid records as at least a little fake, i don't really care about all the justifications statheads have come up with

and i DO want giancarlo to break the 'real' record but i'm never gonna quiet the part of my brain that's going NOT LIKE THIS

i extremely hate the great juicing of the ball and i think it was a horrible thing to happen

i'm aware that the ball has been tampered with before, but the extent to which it's changed The Home Run is ridiculous

usually when these sorts of changes happen it's to fix an extreme, not to create one. this may have an equal effect of the mound being lowered but those changes were made in completely different directions

not against making adjustments like these (at least if the commissioner is being transparent about it, which is another thing) but this is an adjustment that's setting new league-wide records etc. meanwhile they could've actually instituted changes to fix a real problem (the expanding strike zone), but they chose to go a route that drove the sport even more towards TTOs.

as long as rougned odor is suddenly hitting 30+ homers as a second basemen and still sucking, beating maris isn't going to mean what it should to me

i'm guessing there are arguments about what the run environment was like in 1961 and how records aren't real and everything is BS and i'm willing to hear those, i'm just corny

and i really hope the ball gets a little less juiced at some point

adam duvall has 31 homers! i forgot he existed

i used the word extremely 3 posts in a row without realizing it

There are like 115 players with twenty HR right now

that number in 2014 was 57!

Ichiro one behind John Vander Wal's single-season pinch-hit record!

his power numbers are way up this year. 3 HR!

UN. JUICE. THE BALL.

Also the first season his home runs have exceeded his stolen bases.

out of curiosity is there like legit proof that the ball is juiced vs. just a change in batting coaching (aka: it's ok to sstrike out 200 times just try to hit 30 homers; launch angle training; etc)? was talking abt it with a pal tonight and realized neither of us knew if there was any solid evidence, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to prove

there is interesting evidence but not necessarily incontrovertible proof, search the ringer or fangraphs for some good articles

the entire league did not suddenly switch swinging strategy at a specific point in the middle of 2015

the lindbergh/lichtman study is absolutely enough for me. the statcast era has given us everything we need to know to see the difference and weed out other variables.

has there been a league-wide shift in hitting philosophy since then? yeah, but i don't think that would've happened if it wasn't clear there was a new ball to work with. it presented a new opportunity to get offensive value out of struggling, aging hitters, and teams have taken advantage.

i don't think it's actually possible in our human reality for this degree of HR% increase to happen in this short a span without a change to the ball, and i have a doctorate in baseball science

i'm not saying i don't believe it, i just haven't really done the research (and when i try to google it i find more "fake news" on the subject than good shit). will check out the ringer and fangraphs tho, thx!

throw a baseball and then throw a tennis ball and see the movement difference. It's the extreme example but it's a pretty simple demonstration about what happens to objects in space

Jeter on Stanton: "I don't know him well. I haven't spoken to him. Anything we're going to do moving forward with the organization we'll discuss with Mike (Giancarlo)."

— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) October 3, 2017

"Derek Jeter became CEO of the Marlins that moment." -- Van Jones

https://sports.yahoo.com/derek-jeter-led-marlins-parted-ways-scout-hospital-undergoing-cancer-surgery-162134586.html

Ben and Jeff talked to a Marlins fan (it's not j0rd)

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/effectively-wild-episode-1148-im-a-marlins-fan-ama/

Excepting Jose Fernandez, the Marlins' all-time top 25 players, by WAR:
- One left as free agent
- One waived
- Three still on the club
- Twenty traded

— Sam Miller (@SamMillerBB) December 11, 2017

The backstory of the Giancarlo Stanton trade is bonkers. Miami threatened that if he didn’t accept a trade to St. Louis or San Francisco, he would be a Marlin for life. He called their bluff. And because of it, he’s a New York Yankee.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2017

so dumb, it's... dumb

- Three still on the club

Yelich, Hechavarria, Ozuna?

yelich, ozuna, realmuto

Ah yes. I would be surprised if by the end of 2018 those three are still on the squad.

#Marlins pushing Ozuna, but complication is interested teams prefer Yelich: more control/higher upside and don't want to give up pieces for Ozuna when clubs believe -- regardless what Mia says -- that both will be traded this offseason.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 12, 2017

turns out that announcing your team is broken and needs to cut its payroll in half is not a savvy negotiating ploy

https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/untitled-81.gif?w=1000

spot the Onion

https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/12/19/miami-marlins-derek-jeter-town-hall-meeting-marlins-man

https://sports.theonion.com/cash-strapped-florida-retiree-desperately-selling-off-a-1821511445

it's the one with "theonion.com" in the url

you got it, Aristotelian ideal of a dick

https://deadspin.com/rob-manfred-whines-to-espn-brass-after-getting-shredded-1821550864

le batard is a hero

yes