24,523

hanley

volquez ip < 4.1

but I’m afraid in its present form, it would only be useful as confetti. That is unless somebody out there loves the challenge of a nice 6,000,000-piece puzzle.

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.

Pretty dismal outlook. That was a lot of effort crunching numbers to make us fans feel bad. Apparently, the only reason for us to watch the Fish is to see when our bullpen, starters and defense to implode, since they’ve been precarious all season, and only successful because of pure luck.

I can’t say I know what all of their metrics and projections mean, but I do know one thing: Stats are great, but they can’t predict the future. That’s why they play the game on the field, not on paper.

Seriously, why can’t our team have some time in the sun? Why so quick to piss on our campfire? Honestly, I could care less what your projections have to say, I think this team can be successful this year and have a winning season. And I’ll enjoy watching them the whole way.

...to see how one would “beat up” on the BP article. Believe me, nobody is soaking up the start of this season more than me, but if you can honestly look at the peripherals the pitchers (yes, including the bullpen) are putting up, at the record in one-run games, at the RS/RA numbers outside of that blowout of the Nats, and tell me this is a .600 team, you’re practicing outright delusion.

And the thing is, for as easy as it is to hunker down and take on this “us against the world” attitude whenever someone says something negative, when the season comes to a close and the 82-win Marlins are in fourth place, we’re going to be pointing at this guy’s inevitable injury and that guy’s freak injury and “imagine if we had the real rotation healthy”—and it’s going to be the exact other side of the coin that all these schedule/pitching/defense articles reside on.

All of these things make up the game of baseball, and pretending some don’t matter when the chips are up, and harping on others when the chips are down, are the same practice. You can call out people now, but I’d venture it’s a lot easier to do so knowing that there’s really nobody to do the same to us come September, justified as they would be.

And yes, of course this big ball of negativity had to be my return post. I couldn’t just pop in for a Rally Beer Run… no, I had to go and ostracize myself right out of the gate.