The Miami Marlins did not fare well in their recent six-game home stand, dropping four of six games against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The Marlins are now heading out on a West Coast trip and their first stop is in Colorado to face the Colorado Rockies. The good news is the Rockies have not been much better or worse than the Marlins have been this season, so that makes us perfect opponents to face off in a three-game set in Coors Field that should have been more important had both teams done as they were expected at the start of the year.

Tale of the Tape

Obviously, you can see the Rockies' numbers are inflated on both ends due to their extreme scoring environment. Their hitters are bound to look better than they probably are because Coors Field is carrying the ball so well, but their pitchers are bound to look worse as well because of the same reason. Of course, for the Rockies, their pitchers have actually done poorly; the Rockies' ERA- of 124 is the highest in baseball (in the case of FanGraphs' "minus" stats, the higher, the worse) and the FIP- of 108 is the fifth worst in baseball.

Stadium: Coors Field

Five-Year Run PF*: 1.10
Five-Year Home Run PF*: 1.12

*Denotes five-year regressed park factors as calculated by Patriot here

As you know, Coors Field is expansive in part because, if it were not, we would see a lot more home runs than we do now. But the problem with an expansive stadium like that is that it is a burden on the fielders and does tend to also allow more doubles and triples. Combine that with the home run aspect and Coors Field is a hitting haven, though it is not close to what it once was 12 or so years ago.

Series Preview

To preview the Marlins / Rockies series, I asked Andrew Martin of the SB Nation Rockies blog Purple Row a few questions. He also sent me some questions so that I could answer them in his own series preview. Check out what Andrew had to say about these five questions.

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1) The Colorado Rockies were at least expected to compete in the NL West. In a nutshell, what has gone wrong in 2012?

3) What are you watching for in the remainder of the 2012 season?

4) What positive can you take out of this year?

5) What direction do you think the Colorado front office has this team going in the future?

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I want to thank Andrew for taking the time to answer my questions. He had a few of his own for the Marlins in 2012, and here's a preview of what you can see over at Purple Row.

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1) So I guess the big question for you is "what on earth happened?" I'm looking through the team numbers, and there just doesn't seem to be any one particular glaring hole.

In short, almost every player on the Miami Marlins performed below their preseason expectations. The Marlins were expected to do well offensively in 2012, provided Hanley Ramirez just regressed to his mean a little and the rest of the players performed on par. Instead, five of the team's eight regular starters went well below expectations begin the season, with the total costing the Marlins fifty runs through the start of the second half. The players who did play up to expectations did not exceed them enough to make up for it.

Combine that with a late-season collapse of two of the team's starting pitchers and multiple injuries to starting players and you get exactly what happened; the Marlins went from potential contenders to trade deadline sellers. With the team trading two players and injuries taking a few others at various times, the Marlins now look like a decimated team aside from the still-good core.

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Again, thanks to Andrew for answering my questions and sending his own, and good luck to both sides in this series!