Florida Marlins and Interleague play

The Marlins enter tonight's game with the best record in the NL in interleague play.

The Marlins have the best record in the National League in interleague play, 10-5, and have climbed back to within one game of the NL East lead. The Angels lead baseball with an 11-4 interleague record.

The Marlins record becomes more impressive considering all of their games are against the division most consider the best in baseball and the AL holds a 113-96 advantage this season entering the final week of interleague play.

Florida’s success against the AL has been more related to its bats than its arms. The Marlins lead all NL teams with a .293 batting average and are second in home runs with 19 during interleague games. But only four teams in the NL have a worse ERA than the Marlins’ 4.97 against AL teams.

While I will not argue about the bats have done their job, the inflated pitching stats, while correct, are mainly due to three games.  On May 22 against the Rays, pitching on three-days rest for the first time in his career, Ricky Nolasco gave up 8 ER in two innings, the bullpen came on to give up 7 more.  The biggest contributor out of the pen was Davidson with 5 ER. Ricky was sent down to New Orleans after the game.  On May 23, how I hated May, the bullpen gave up 8 ER with biggest contributors being Lindstrom (4) and Penn (2).  And on June 23, Lindstrom (3) and Nunez (2) gave up 5 ER in a mind boggling 0.2 inning.

I guess what I am getting at here is that for the most part the starting pitching against the AL has been pretty good.  The bullpen not so much, but if you take Lindstrom, Davidson and Penn out of the equation, the overall pitching looks pretty good.  And for now Lindstrom, Davidson and Penn are all out of the equation.