Hitting The Cutoff Man

2009: 87-72, 2nd in NL West. Pythagorean record of 82-80.
Key Additions: RP Jose Veras, IF Mike Lamb
Key Losses: RF Jeremy Hermida, 1B Nick Johnson, RPs Kiko Calero and Matt Lindstrom
2010 Projections: PECOTA – 80-82, 3rd in NL East. CHONE – 76-86, 4th. CAIRO – 80-82, 3rd.

Pitching: 2009 – 4.15 FIP (9th in MLB), 4.20 for starters, 4.07 for relievers
2010 – Josh Johnson is an ace, and Ricky Nolasco should bounce back from an extremely unlucky season, but the rest of the rotation is a little dicey. The pen is a pretty anonymous group that was effective last season but figures to miss the services of Calero.
Hitting: 2009 – .331 wOBA (13th in MLB)
2010 – The Marlins have managed to surround Hanley Ramirez with some solid bats. The big questions will be if 2009 NL Rookie of the Year Chris Coghlan can maintain his production and if 2010 rookie Gaby Sanchez can hold down the first base job.
Fielding: 2009 – UZR of -20.5 (22nd in MLB)
2010 – If Sanchez sticks at first base, it pushes Jorge Cantu back to third base, where he's put up a -22.8 UZR in 248 games. Combined with Dan Uggla's poor glove at second base and Ramirez's average-ish glove at shortstop, that doesn't bode well for the infield defense.

Reasons to Watch
1. Hanley Ramirez: If the Red Sox hadn't traded him, Ramirez would be one of the biggest stars in baseball. But tucked away in South Florida, he doesn't get a whole lot of attention, which is a shame. His wOBAs the last three years are .411, .405 and .410. Talk about consistency. His total wOBA over those seasons ranks fifth in the big leagues, ahead of guys like Mark Teixeira, Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera. And oh yeah, Ramirez is doing this while playing shortstop.
2. Cameron Maybin: Things didn't work out last season for Maybin, who got the starting center field job to start the season but was sent down to Triple-A in early May after hitting .202/.280/.310 in 26 games. Maybin didn't resurface until September. He did hit .293/.353/.500 over the last month, but September numbers tend to be unreliable due to expanded rosters. Still, Maybin is only turning 23 on April 4, and he has hit at every minor league level. CHONE projects a solid .280/.366/.437 line for Maybin this season, which would make him quite valuable, especially if he can play solid defense in center as well.
3. Ricky Nolasco: If you look at Nolasco's peripheral stats last season, you would think he had a great season. Nolasco struck out more than a batter an inning and had nearly 4.5 Ks per walk. He just barely gave up more hits than innings pitched, and his home runs per fly ball rate was right in line with his career number. And in fact, Nolasco put up a solid 3.35 FIP, which stands in stark contrast to his 5.06 ERA. The discrepancy probably had a lot to do with Nolasco giving up the third-highest batting average on balls in play, a stat that should turn around this season.

Paint By Numbers: Dan's Uggla is nothing if not consistent. Here are his home runs, RBI and OPS for his four years in Florida: 27-90-.818, 31-88-.805, 32-92-.874, 31-90-.813. Of course, Uggla also has struck out at least 150 times each of the past three seasons. ... Emilio Bonifacio posted the second-worst wOBA of any player with at least 500 plate appearances last season. He also had the second-lowest slugging percentage and isolated power rate, thanks to a total of 18 extra-base hits. ... Nolasco stranded just 61 percent of runners who reached base against him, the worst rate of any qualified pitcher by five percentage points and about 10 percentage points below the league average. In 2008, Nolasco stranded 75.7 percent of base runners, and CHONE projects that number to go back to 71.1 percent this season.

Blog Jog: Michael Jong of Marlin Maniac reacts to FanGraphs' assessment of Florida as baseball's 22nd-best organization. ... Jong asks and answers the question, "Who is Clay Hensley?" and optimizes the Florida lineup. ... Craig of Fish Stripes comments on the developments in the Marlins' bullpen situation. ... MLB.com beat writer Joe Frisaro forecasts which players will fill out Florida's roster to start the regular season.

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My last post about Eric Chavez was an apt lead-in to yesterday's news that Nomar Garciaparra was retiring. As Rob Neyer phrased it, Nomar's career was "an excellent object lesson in the non-inevitability of immortality."

Garciaparra was on his way to becoming an absolute, no-doubt Hall of Famer until the injuries started chipping away at him.

It's amazing to look back now on the 2000 season. That year was Nomaaaaaaaah's best, as he hit .372/.434/.599, won the AL batting title and punched up a career-high 155 OPS+.

It's funny though -- immortality is certainly not inevitable, but even if Nomar isn't a Hall of Famer, he's a guy people will remember for a long time. If you look at other guys who had great seasons in 2000 (just 10 years ago!) it's stunning how quickly players of a somewhat lower quality become completely irrelevant.

For example, who were the top 10 in batting average in the majors in 2000? Nomar was one, and Todd Helton, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Carlos Delgado and Derek Jeter appear on the list too.

The rest of that list inspired me to scratch my head and go, "THAT guy?"

In 2000, it's difficult to remember, Darin Erstad and Moises Alou hit .355, Jeffrey Hammonds hit .335 and David Segui hit .334, all finishing in the top 10. This same year, Richard Hidalgo finished fifth in home runs, and the top 10 in ERA included Jeff D'Amico, Chan Ho Park and Rick Ankiel.

The fact is, nothing is inevitable in baseball. If you look at last year's leaders, you can confidently predict that Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer will go down as two of the greatest players of all time, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera will eventually cruise into the Hall and Joey Votto and Pablo Sandoval have years of All-Star games and MVP votes ahead of them.

But reality is a lot messier than that. Chances are, injuries will sap somebody's potential before it fully blooms, and someone else's career will fizzle out just as quickly as it erupted in the first place.

We'll just have to stay tuned to find out who.

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