Marlins GM for a day

With the Winter meetings starting and one of my favorite baseball writers, Joe Sheehan, doing a GM for a day series over at Baseball Prospectus I thought I would offer a few of my thoughts on what the Marlins should do this off season. Joe has already said that he was only doing a handful of these and that he wouldn’t get to all of the teams. I assume that he won’t get to the Marlins because let’s face it not that many people on the site would like to read it.

So here goes it. The Marlins were 84-77 last season however they outplayed their Pythagorean record by a few games which called for a .500 team, as they scored only three more runs than they gave up. However this was a pretty good ball club and has a chance to be better next season. Their starters for the first half were horrible, but once Josh Johnson, and Chris Volstad got to the majors from injuries or promotion the rotation was better. They have already traded away players because they were reaching arbitration and the Marlins didn’t want to pay their substantial raises. Mike Jacobs was traded for a middle reliever, and a fairly competent one at that. This is the first good thing that has happened for us looking forward. Mike Jacobs has a lot of raw power, but his .299 OBP is below bad, so bad that the only time he should be hitting is against right handed pitchers and he should never ever be fielding. He is a butcher at first base. The Fielding Bible has him at -27 runs which was last in MLB. The second trade was of Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham for Emilio Bonifacio and some minor league players. Olsen was an innings eater, throwing 201 of them at basically a little below league average which is valuable as a 4th starter, and Willingham is a patient hitter who has decent power and had an injury riddled season but a pretty good one all around. Both were due big raises most likely in arbitration. Bonifacio is a slick fielding second baseman who can’t hit a lick. These deals leave a lot of questions about how our team will look next year with no 1B or LF and two 2B. Oh, we also traded relief pitchers one for one with the Cubs and got the much better player, Jose Ceda, for Kevin Gregg because the Cubs like the save stat.

On to next year’s club, and the first obvious move is to slide Cody Ross over to LF from CF to make room for Cameron Maybin, our best prospect and a kid that looks to have a ton of talent and potential. This shift does a few things. It makes the Marlins much better in outfield defense. Cody Ross was above average fielding in center, which means he will be a way above average fielder in left field, a place where Willingham was -7 runs. Also Maybin will be way above average in CF, probably close to 10 runs better than Ross. We are probably 30 runs better defensively in the outfield because of this. Offensively I doubt if there will be much difference. Ross is not quite as good as Willingham with the bat, but Maybin should be better than our CF situation last year that saw Alfredo Amezega get 150 plate appearances.

Now onto the infield, I would shift Dan Uggla from second base to third base. He will be much better than Cantu with the bat, and much better than Cantu with the glove. Uggla has been basically a league average defender at the keystone, so he should end up at least league average at third if not adding even more value than that. Uggla is probably 25 runs better than Cantu. So Bonifacio takes over at 2B. Like I said, the kid can’t really hit at all. He is basically a little better than replacement level, but he is only 23, so it may uptick a little bit because of maturation. But he will defend better than Uggla, or at least reports say that he will defend better. 2B defense is really important and we may catch 10 runs from that, but probably lose 30 in offense. So we probably lose 20 runs at 2B. If I had the money, I’d find a way to sign a 3B, or even better, sign a guy like Furcal and move Hanley to third base while retaining Uggla at second. But I have to work in a world where there is no money to be had, and right now Bonifacio, and aligning them correctly is the best I can do. Catcher is the next thing to address. I would try to trade Matt Treanor. He was by far the worst hitter that played everyday for us. Even with the huge positional adjustment for catching he was below replacement level. John Baker proved he can hit in his 233 AB last season after replacing Treanor who had an injury. John Baker is my everyday catcher, but I would like to sign a right handed catcher who can platoon and play 1-2 times a week. Ivan Rodriguez likes the area and if he will take a reduced role then I wouldn’t think twice about giving him two years that don’t weigh down the payroll. Also short-term is the way to think with catcher because our first round pick Kyle Skipworth is in the minors and 2-3 years from now should take over. Baker/Pudge is probably 25 runs better than more than half the starts going to Matt Treanor or the inept Mike Rabelo. Last but not least is 1B. Jorge Cantu is up for a raise too and if I could get value back for him I would trade him as well. His defense will be hidden more at 1B than 3B, and he was a better hitter than Jacobs. He would probably represent 5 runs better than Jacobs, maybe 10 which is good if I can’t find anything out there to get back in value. However free playing time is sitting there in the minors and I think that Gaby Sanchez can play to the same level as Cantu at first base for FREE since he doesn’t have an arbitration raise coming. It is like finding money in your pocket.

The guys who throw the ball were a huge problem for us last year. Only 4 guys threw more than 100 Innings for us last year, and two of them Andrew Miller and Mark Hendrickson had a negative VORP. Scott Olsen I already touched on, and the last was Ricky Nolasco. Ricky was a top 10 pitcher in the NL last year without many people noticing, throwing 212 Innings with a 3.52 ERA. At 25 there is no reason to think it is not for real either. Guys like Burke Badenhop, Mark Hendrickson, and Ryan Tucker were horrible while waiting for Anibal Sanchez and Josh Johnson to come back from injury. Once we got the rotation together it was actually above league average for the last 1/3 of the season. The rotation should set up as Nolasco, Josh Johnson, Chris Volstad, Anibal Sanchez, Andrew Miller with Ryan Tucker there to make spot starts. As GM I would think long and hard about trying to sign a cheap innings eater if I could find it, but it is not likely. Sanchez wasn’t good once he got up but has shown he has the ability to pitch at this level before. Miller and Tucker are both really young, and Miller has a ton of talent and should really improve next year. Replacing those other starts with healthy starts by Josh Johnson and Chris Volstad should severely help. Also since Josh Johnson and Volstad are both dramatic groundball pitchers the defensive improvement will be even more valuable. The bullpen was good, and got even better by leveraging Gregg’s save total to get Jose Ceda and adding Leo Nunez for the OBP black hole that is Mike Jacobs. However they didn’t offer arbitration to Arthur Rhodes who was a good lefty specialist for us. I would try to resign him. Lindstrom is going to close but I’d give high leverage situations to Joe Nelson and Jose Ceda.

Since we played at an 81-81 pace we will apply these run totals to that. With the pitching I could see us being 80-90 runs better which would make us an 89-91 win team which may or may not make us good enough to win the division. It will however make us good enough to compete for the playoffs. If we are still in it at the trading deadline maybe we add a piece that helps. Either way this is how I think they should go about their off-season and alignment of the team next year.