Season so far
by brickell
on May 12, 2008 12:41 AM EDT
With the 7th win in a row and the best record in baseball, they're finally getting noticed. A commentator on ESPN admitted that it was a good team, but claims they have been "lucky in close games" and "have played an easy schedule". With close to a quarter of the season on the books let's take a look at if that's true. I know some of you are much better at the stats, so feel free to contribute.
Luck:
May be some merrit to this.
They are 7-3 in 1-run games and 3-0 in extra innings. Let's call it 10-3 in close games. That's the best record in the league. Compare to 1-13 for Atlanta, 10-11 for Philadelphia and 7-4 for New York. A few pitches here and there and it could still be a logjam at the top of the division. But a stellar bullpen has to account for some of this luck. They have the 3rd best bullpen ERA in the majors and have given up the 2nd fewest HRs. The Marlins power has also enabled them to get runs in bunches but there may be some luck here ("clutch"?) or could it be the bench?
Late innings of close games v regular season
AVG - .299 v .265
SLG - .504 v .456
HR/AB - .06 v .04
Schedule:
According to ESPN - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/rpi
The Marlins have the 2nd highest RPI and are 14th in strength of schedule. Hardly a cakewalk. Lucky or not, the team record is legit in my opinion.
2 other things stand out - Atlanta, probably the unluckiest team has had the easiest schedule so far. The expected W-L formula has the Marlins tied with Philadelphia and New York, 3.5 games behind Atlanta. Good thing the play the games on the field and not on paper.
It reminds me of another lucky team, the 2003 Marlins. They didn't always have it together, but they found ways to win close games, to win series, to grind it out. Let's hope this year's team keeps it up and follows them all the way to the World Series.
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Good Post Brickell!
I’m guessing here….
but I think if you did a 2007 and 2008 comparison for the first 37 games, what you would find is that the aspect of the game that dramatically changed in close games was the pitching. I"m guessing the hitting would be pretty much the same.
At the start of the 2007 season the bullpen roles weren’t set and Jorge Julio was called on to closeout close games. As we all painfully remember, Julio didn’t logged save one in his time with the Marlins.
I haven’t ran the numbers to back up my guess, but I think that would be the biggest difference.
Could be wrong, I am a lot.
by craig on
May 12, 2008 9:11 AM EDT
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Also of note
I also find it interesting that the Marlins only have 7 saves this season out of 10 chances.
by brickell on
May 12, 2008 10:48 AM EDT
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As posted elsewhere...
A little bit of projection.
They have 38 games under their belt at a start of .605. There are a 124 games left.
Here’s a chart on how they could finish the season starting with their current clip.
124 games @ .605 = 75 more wins = 98-64 record = .605
.605 = 98-64 = .605
.500 = 85-77 = .525
.400 = 73-89 = .451
.300 is a stretch so I’m not including it. .400 is pretty bad. Not even the lowly nationals are that bad this year. Yet they’d end the season better than they did last year (71-91). Getting back down to .500 seems more likely. At that rate they’d end the season amidst the playoff hunt (would have been 4 games behind last year). Not many people predicted they’d even be as good as last year (I was one of them), much less competing at the end of the season but that’s exactly where it looks like we’ll be. If by chance they do end up winning 98, that’d be better than any team since 2005. Just saying.
Here’s another way of looking at it.
Last year the Phillies won the division and San Diego and Colorado tied for the wild card with 89 wins. If that’s the bench-mark then the Marlins need 66 more wins to make it. I’m starting a countdown. So they only need to do better than 66-58 (.532) the rest of the season. That’s good, but it’s not impossible.
Let’s go Fish!
*use these calculations at your own risk. It’s still early and I’m "working" at the same time.
by brickell on
May 13, 2008 10:49 AM EDT
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