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BOLD PREDICTIONS Which of these 15 Marlins predictions is most realistic?

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Marlins vs Rays: Game 46 Thread

Marlins head north to Tampa for continuation of Inter-league play

By Lance Brozdowski
Greg Fiume/Getty Images

Tied for the major league lead in Home Runs, the Tampa Bay Rays host the Marlins on Wednesday night in continuation of a four game series featuring some 'home-and-home' flavor, this time at Tropicana Field.

Seeking their 24th win of the season, the Fish send Justin Nicolino to the mound against the 3-0 Matt Andriese.

Team Starter ERA FIP ZIPS Projected ERA
TB Matt Andriese 2.11 3.49 3.86
MIA Justin Nicolino 4.30 5.11 4.58

Matt Andriese has come up a lot in fantasy baseball related talks, as well as those revolving around the Ray's pitching staff - considered the core of a relatively young team. A positive sign for the Marlins is that these mentions have been of regression after Andreise's hot start to the 2016 season, winning all three of his decisions and posting a stellar 2.11 ERA.

But taking a deeper look at the 26 year old yields a different result.

Andriese has struck out on 14.1% of the batters he has faced, which among qualified starters would land him in the bottom 10 overall, right around the likes of the struggling Adam Wainwright and the Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz (albeit, his 3 starts is not enough to consider him a qualified starter). On top of that his BABIP is an eerily low .167, which screams regression in every sense of the word. Simply put, Andriese is pitching to a lot of contact, evidenced by his 4.64 K/9 and his 2.11 BB/9, and all of that contact is finding the gloves of Ray's defenders. While most pitchers do carry low BABIPs on a team that is good defensively, sub .200 BABIPs are out of this world - comparable to how Marcell Ozuna has been swinging the bat of late.

I honestly expected that the next time I dove into a game thread and recap for Fish Stripes, Ozuna would have cooled off greatly from his torrid stretch, yet even the greats are proven wrong time and time again. While Ozuna's BABIP is still about 50 points higher than his career average, the positive note is his slight decrease is strikeouts and uptick in his walk rate. Ozuna's success has been greatly welcomed with the struggling Giancarlo Stanton - it will be scary to see the lineup if Stanton and Ozuna both are hot at the same time in the coming weeks.

Today's Lineups

MIAMI MARLINS TAMPA BAY RAYS
Ichiro Suzuki - RF Brandon Guyer - DH
Martin Prado - 3B Mikie Mahtook - LF
Justin Bour - DH Evan Longoria - 3B
Marcell Ozuna - CF Steve Pearce - 2B
Derek Dietrich - 2B Steven Souza - RF
J.T. Realmuto - C Logan Morrison - 1B
Chris Johnson - 1B Desmond Jennings - CF
Cole Gillespie - LF Taylor Motter - SS
Adeiny Hechavarria - SS Curt Casali - C
Justin Nicolino - LHP Matt Andriese - RHP

Notes

  • The big note from the lineup reveal is that Giancarlo Stanton is out of the lineup for Wednesday's tilt. Humor me for a second, but after a day where Stanton finally took the ball out of the park, I'm surprised that this is the so called 'mental day off' Mattingly gives the slugger as the Marlins square off against the contact prone Andriese. I think more efficient use of the lineup card would have been to give Stanton the DH spot to focus on his swing pre-game, leaving Bour to play first and sitting the righty Chris Johnson who has only a .701 OPS in the month of May.
  • Bovada has the Rays as the favorite at -210, with the run total over/under at 8.5. My predicted score below says I will take the over on the run total, but stick with the favorite in the overall game.
Bold prediction: This is the first time I have not picked the Marlins to beat their opponent on my thread and recap day, but while Andriese has been lucky, I think there is a better chance he proves more effective than Nicolino....
I hope I am wrong but... Rays defeat Marlins 6 - 4

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