Giancarlo is a beast

I don't see how you missed it.... but if you did.... Giancarlo hit a monster dong OUT of Dodger stadium Tuesday night....

Only 5 balls have ever left Dodger stadium and now Giancarlo is responsible for one of them.467 feet at a speed of 115 MPH.

Too bad the Marlins gave up 21 hits that night... 21!!

It was all better Wednesday night as Dee Gordon went 4-5, lifted his average to a whopping .426 and Steve Cishek AJ Ramos got the save for the Marlins in a 5-4 victory. Defensive play of the night...

Ufffffff! Hechavarria, even though the metrics still believe that he is atrocious, continues to make stellar plays on the field.

Day off Thursday, Bring on the reeling Braves over the weekend....

New closer, new beginnings....

The end of the line for Steve Cishek

I held myself.... Oh God did I hold myself back after Sunday's game in San Francisco. Our lovely "closer" blew another one in San Francisco by walking in the tying run and later getting the loss. I held myself back.

Let us move to Monday night....a game I did not expect them to win against the team with the best record in the NL who is 13-2 at home with a stud in Greinke on the mound. I would of been ok with a 2-1 loss in the ninth but Yelich hits the home run, they take the lead and hey we might win this game!

Then you remember that you are on the road and your "closer" has to come into the game... Twitter will help me the rest of the way

I said my prayers....I held my breathe and got on the ride hoping for a different result.

He gets an out.... you remember he did the same yesterday

Then the base on balls and you remember why you said the prayers.

Eithier gets a hit and your heart sinks because you know....Take him out you think...

Too late. Van Slyke home run ball game 5-3 loss.... THE FUCK!

Then twitter explodes...Lets analyze some of these because #Marlinsnation is never this upset!

Hard to argue with those points...

That is actually very true... I wish my job was simply to get three outs...

Ouch....

 Gosh don't remind me of those names.... nightmares! Also who can not forget the 6 finger fastball of Antonio Alfonseca in that bunch....

OMG that is Redmond! He supports bad closers then and NOW!

But ladies and gentlemen the good news is here as the writing is now on the wall...

The life of a closer is delicate...and a bad stretch could relegate you first out of the role of closer and next thing you know you are a middle reliever in Myrtle Beach pitching for the Mermen

But don't worry Val Reyes still has your back Cishek....

(Leave Britney alone)

Too bad she is the only person with your back

The end is here for Steve Cishek as our closer and it was fun while it lasted. Now he can join Heath Bell on the list of names that make us cringe

SO LONG CISHEK

Fan Graphs and last nights game.

The Marlins won last night in what I would call the way they don't teach you to win a game and the image above brought to you by fangraphs.com is a great tool to see where the odds of the Marlins winning were at during any point of the game. The lower the line the better the odds were for the Marlins to win....

I want to harp more on the later innings especially after the Bryan Morris collapse of Monday night.

Bottom of the 7th with the score 2-1
Lead off walk to Wilson Ramos. According to fan graphs, that run scores 38 percent of the time and that little spike in the middle of the 7th shows the odds going down (up).
After one out Latos walks Uggla and we are now back at bad odds but Nick Masset comes in to the game and finishes off the 7th with a nifty play by Flash Gordon.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/8878534/v102752483

Bottom of the 8th with the score 2-1
Lead off walk to Denard Span a speedster. Again another 38 percent chance of scoring on base for the Nationals. Again the Marlins find a way to get out of the inning. This Houdini act....

Bottom of the 9th and Cishek in with score 2-1
Almost a lead off walk but a bloop single (it happens) but then the error by Hechavarria and its 1st and 2nd with no outs. Fan Graphs shows that spike there and actually had the game as a coin flip at that point! Thank goodness Dan Uggla can't bunt (or hit) and provided a perfect bunt to get an out at 3. At least he can cook a steak though!

Steve Cishek then turns into the Cishek of old and strikes out the last two batters to win the game... How do you even pull that one out of your butt Marlins?? I do not know but I am not offended. Marlins win 2-1, Latos gets his first Marlins win with his tattoos and weird hair cut, but I just saw his wife.... I will no longer make fun of him... Dallas Latos. That is all I have to say... 

Dallas Latos...

Rubber match today at 1:05... day baseball!

The DFA of Jarrod Saltalamacchia

Last year the Marlins gave Jarrod Saltalammachia, an OK catcher coming off a good season and world series championship, a 3 year 21 million dollar contract to sign on with the fish. He was meant to fill in the gap until JT Realmuto was ready to sign on. Of course he went off and performed at a .220 BA, 320 OBP and the disturbing number of 143 K, or better said, a strikeout in 33 percent of his at bats! Those that do not know enough about baseball need to know that a K is the best case scenario for a defense as nothing positive can happen for the offense thanks a strikeout. Of course Salty was striking out 1 in every 3 at bats!!

Not good Salty...

The Marlins really do have bad luck in signing catchers... Remember how Jeffrey Loria was extremely excited about signing another catcher in 2011 coming off a career year with Toronto? He was more known for his cool masks then his hitting here. Mr John Buck who hit a whopping .192 was that big signee and that big bust, but his catcher helmets are cool!

Bring us back to 2015, and the start of this still very early season. You may recall game number one and Jarrod's bases loaded opportunity with zero outs and his chance to shine.... 

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2015_04_06_atlmlb_miamlb_1&mode=video RUH ROH 

and it really only trended downwards from there. His hitting clip kept going down until the Marlins quickly gave up on him and brought in JT Realmuto quickly into the starting role. The stunning part was that Salty quickly became benched in favor of Realmuto who is a better defender than Salty as evidence by this play on Monday night.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2015_04_27_nynmlb_miamlb_1&mode=video&content_id=91471483&tcid=vpp_copy_91471483

Catchers do not make that play... so that already is a plus. Also it helps when the catcher or well the position player you have hits better than .069!! So after a small sample size of 33 at bats which in reality is too small to judge in baseball the Marlins decided that after he returned from paternity leave (Nice touch) to designate him for assignment (DFA) That is the fancy way of saying GET OUT! 

One issue here, the Marlins still owe him what is left of this year and next year and even though we talk bad about him, Salty is still a better back up than Jeff Mathis. So why let 14 million just go away and be given the Dan Uggla treatment? There must be something deeper, there must be a reason to not have him around. Was he a clubhouse cancer? Was he really that bad to have around? Who knows, but he is gone now and apparently some American League team will take him and use him as a DH/C. Good luck to you Salty and hopefully the wind generated by your strikeouts can provide some good energy in another stadium. 

On the positive note! A good win and recovery by Steve Cishek to take game two against the Metropolitans. Rubber match against Old man Colon today. Lets keep the winning rolling! 

The Wonderment of Dee Gordon....

So this young man from the Los Angeles Dodgers was traded to Miami in what some would say was a one sided deal... We lost one of our best pitching prospects in Andrew Heaney but also got Dan Haren for a grand total of zero.zero dollars. (He hasn't been too bad either). All we knew about him was that he was fast and he doesn't walk. Well that and that he loves to be caressed by Rod Barajas.

I'm sure he misses his old teammate.

Now he is in Miami and still does not walk but amazingly he has 34 hits in 20 baseball games and is hitting an astonishing .395! Even more astounding is his caught stealing number as he has been thrown out 6 times on the bases already! Even Dee is surprising himself. 

 Now I don't get into those advance BABIP stats which say he is getting lucky and stuff because that just puts a damper even though I am a statistics teacher. Can we just say that he is a quality slap hitter and worth the investment we put on him?

All I know is he has got hops and can easily dunk over Christian Yelich

Take that Christian!!!

So far its been positive having Mr. Dee Gordon around.... now if only he can close games and not let that Shrek guy blow another one... Shades of Heath Bell... 

(That was a scary time period)

Return for the 2015 season

I am back... it has been a hiatus...it has been depressing. Justin Ruggiano is long gone from the roster but it is time to get excited for the 2015 season! We are playing Grapefruit League games and Stanton wants you to see his new face!

What a G

Get ready for a month of names like Ryan Chaffee and Vin Mazzero! Who wants to analyze the most unlikely people to make the Marlins roster.... (Can we fast forward to Opening Day...?)

Why don't they always play like this?

So tell me why for a second, do the Marlins not play like they did this weekend all year. They fell a few feet short (or to the right) of sweeping a team that is 11 games ahead in the standings in the NL Central in the Cincinnati Reds. It took that...

to secure the win today and for them to salvage a game in this 3 game set.

But more importantly, where were you when the 500,000th error in MLB History was made and not much later the 500,001th. I couldn't believe that there have only been 500,000 errors in the 120 years of Major League Baseball and of course it had to be a Miami Marlin in this debacle of a season that committed the error. Here it is.

Of course he didn't know that this was happening at the time as 499,999 happened literally seconds before but its simply ironic. Either way its a fun piece of MLB trivia, just like the first team to lose 10000 games! Anyone? Yes that is the Philadelphia Phillies.

Ok as a fan with 2.5 weeks left of season what can I look forward to now? Besides the immense amount of pitching changes and hearing that we have a limited bench even though our rosters can expand to 40? Well I do like Wednesday coming up for two reasons, one would be the commemoration of the 500,000th error Jose Reyes bobble head day. Nothing is cooler than making your own bobble head museum at home right? At least that will get me all three for this year. 

Also on Wednesday though comes the end of an era, the end of Larry Chipper Jones abusing us in our backyard. 

As you know he is retiring after this year and has always been a career .300+ hitter against the Marlins organization and finally finally!! he will stop torturing us. He has honestly been a man that has tortured us for years and I hate him for that but man do I respect him. He has actually stayed on the same team for years and played the game right. I will absolutely applaud him and give him a standing ovation Wednesday night and hope and expect the rest of my Marlins brethren to do the same for this great player.

So that's the big event to look forward to this week. I'm sure the players are almost dying to get to October 3rd and this fan is partially there but trust me I will still miss it. At least we have a chance of getting a better record than last year!!

-Big note from Saturday night's game, Mark Buehrle went to 188.1 IP on his season total which puts him 11.2 innings away from another 200 inning season with 2 starts left to go. Talk about durability, this would be his 12th season of pitching 200+ innings which seems doable at this point. One of the big reasons why the Marlins signed him this year.