Read More→

Hudson Belinsky, the Angels bloglord over at Halos Daily, stopped by Marlins Daily to contribute a guest post. Here we have Hudson discussing the Marlins’ usage of Steve Cishek, so be sure to give it a read and stop by Halos Daily to check out Hudson’s Angels goodies. Also, make sure to follow Hudson on Twitter.

Steve Cishek is awesome. His name never graced a top prospects list, he never commanded a huge bonus out of the draft, and he had to succeed at every level of the minor leagues before becoming the big league reliever that he is today. Nonetheless, Cishek has made his way to the Marlins’ bullpen, and entered Sunday having been used in seven of the team’s nine games.

Since 2012 is still very young, let’s take a look at what Cishek did last season and see if it’s sustainable. In his age-25 season the right-hander posted a superb 2.63 ERA over 54.2 innings. He struck out 9.05 batters per nine, while walking 3.13 and racked up 1.0 wins above replacement (FanGraphs), which is very good considering how little he pitched. Cishek had a remarkable groundball rate. His groundball-to-flyball ratio of 2.15 ranked 31^st among all pitchers with 40 innings or more, and his groundball rate of 56.8 percent ranked 24^th. Cishek’s fastball is basically a sinker, featuring heavy downward movement as it enters the zone. Sinkerball pitchers are typically groundball guys, so Cishek should be able to sustain his high groundball rate.

Read More→

In a nutshell, the answer is no.

This past week, when the ever-so-famous Bill Baer exchanged questions for the Marlins/Phillies series with yours truly he asked me an especially intriguing question. Despite, at the time, the season only being four games old Bill wanted to know if there was any reason in particular as to why Mike Stanton hadn’t yet gone deep. It’s true; Mike Stanton is easily one of the game’s most feared sluggers and, after seven games through the season he hasn’t yet hit a home run.

Only six games have been played so far this year. The fact that Stanton is homer-less, at least to me, isn’t a huge concern because he’ll obviously heat up. Additionally, he’s not the only slugger who’s yet to blast a round-tripper (Andrew McCutchen, Carlos Gonzalez, Paul Konerko & Lance Berkman are others in that category). And I’m sure Stanton has gone through stretches in the past when he played six straight games (or more) without hitting a homer. But there is some reason to believe that something could possibly be wrong with the slugger, especially considering his fly ball rate sits close to the bottom of the league.

Read More→

Reds-4, Marlins-0

While watching the video below, replace the word “low” with “miserable” and the word “price” with “performance.”

Read More→

Joe Janish, manager and founder of Mets Today, the New York Mets blog on the Sweetspot Network, stopped by to answer a few questions similar to the ones that we asked Bill Baer just yesterday. After stealing Jose Reyes during the off-season, I’m rather surprised that Joe was so willing to answer some questions, but he did. Also, be sure to check out Mets Today and Marlins Daily throughout the season when the two teams match up as we’ll be collaborating or at least swapping interviews.

Can you talk about the Mets’ off-season as a whole and how it’ll either benefit or hurt their chances of making the post-season this year?

The Mets have no chance whatsoever of making the postseason this year. Their decision during the offseason to cut as much payroll as possible as quickly as possible made it impossible to improve the club.

Now that Spring Training is well under way and we have all have a clearer picture of our teams heading into the year, are there any stories in particular that we should keep an eye on?

Read More→

It sure is tough to believe that the season is less than four days away. Well, all that means is that with time running out, we’ve got just a few days to preview the NL East and Marlins competition this year. Let’s start with the blogger whose team was crowned division champs last year, Bill Baer. Bill runs Crashburn Alley, the Phillies blog on the Sweetspot Network and was kind enough to stop by and answer some questions.

Can you talk about the Phillies’ off-season as a whole and how it’ll either benefit or hurt their chances of making the post-season this year?

The Phillies had a pretty lousy off-season, relatively speaking. Laynce Nix was inexplicably handed a two-year contract, Jim Thome was signed to play one game a week in the field and the rest as a pinch-hitter, and the Phillies learned they will be without megastar Chase Utley to start the season. In fact, the entire infield is a giant question mark, as Placido Polanco has dealt with a plethora of injury problems (sports hernia, finger, back), Jimmy Rollins is less limber than he used to be thanks to three leg injuries in 2010, and Ryan Howard‘s torn Achilles. The Phillies aren’t well-prepared to deal with any of the injuries, including Utley’s as they will be using Freddy Galvis, who has taken a whopping 126 PA in Triple-A Lehigh Valley, at second base on Opening Day. They’re still the clear favorites in the NL East, but the Marlins, Braves, and Nationals can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Read More→