Jarrod Saltalamacchia experienced a dramatic culture change when he went from a veteran Red Sox team to the Marlins this offseason, writes David Laurila of FanGraphs. “There aren’t 25-30 [reporters] waiting for you after a game like in Boston,” Saltalamacchia says. “Otherwise, the biggest difference is that there are a lot of younger guys. I’m finding myself saying things like ‘This is how we did it’ or ‘This is what I’ve seen.’ In some ways, it’s almost more of a coaching [role].” Saltalamacchia is one of several Marlins veteran hitters, including Garrett Jones, Casey McGehee, Rafael Furcal, Jeff Baker and Reed Johnson. But the team’s pitching staff remains very young, with an average age of just 25.7. Here are more notes from around baseball.
- Matt Harrison pitched six innings in his first big-league game since last April for the Rangers on Sunday. Texas lost, but having Harrison back should provide a boost for a Rangers rotation that had struggled with injuries — the team had acquired the now-departed Tommy Hanson late in the offseason, and Joe Saunders in spring training. The Rangers’ rotation now features Yu Darvish, Martin Perez, Robbie Ross and Colby Lewis along with Harrison.
- The Cardinals have missed Carlos Beltran so far this season, Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes. Re-signing Beltran wouldn’t have made sense given the Cardinals’ outfield talent, but with Allen Craig struggling badly so far this year in right field, the Cards could use Beltran’s power. The Cardinals have a number of Triple-A outfielders hitting well (Oscar Taveras, Stephen Piscotty, Joey Butler and Randal Grichuk), but so far, they haven’t turned to them. Of course, it’s no surprise that they would continue with Craig in right field, given his track record and contract. (Soon after this post was published, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tweeted that the Cardinals would promote Grichuk and infielder Greg Garcia, optioning outfielder Shane Robinson and second baseman Kolten Wong in the process.)
Good move bringing up anyone but Taveras. Let him get in the groove for the next month and bring him up some time in June. If he keeps hitting the way he’s hitting, it’s hard to envision Matt Adams sticking around in Stl for much longer. Eventually, you have to move Craig to 1B and give Taveras the job in RF.
Keep Adams and trade Craig. Cardinals should be concerned with Craig’s decline in power over the last year and the fact he is struggling to even hit the ball out of the infield so far this year.
Craig is a career .224 hitter in April and .356 in May.
Craig is the hardest to move due to his salary and his age. He stays put and it ends up being between Adams and Taveras in terms of odd man out.
I think Salty could see the writing on the wall in Boston when he was benched in favor of David Ross, but I can’t imagine he’s too happy in his new setting either.
The Marlins are dangerously close to being a good team. I would not be surprised if they finish this season in second place with 85+ wins and a wild card. They are very underrated and their offense has been held back by bad weather. Whenever that team plays in good weather, they win. And contrary to what a certain television show would like you to believe, summer is coming.
I would be very surprised if they got a WC slot. Plenty of teams have bad weather right now.
“. . . held back by bad weather” in Miami? What’s the rest of the country have in April? Good Weather.
yeah, it was like 55 in NYC which is why the Mets beat them
Marlins have played 4 games (3 in NY) in weather below 60 degrees. They are 1-3 in those games. Above 67 degrees they are 0-5. There is no correlation between Marlins play and bad weather.
Good weather this april? You’re joking, right? Yeah, the weather was so great this april that we had a hilarious and famous incident where Pineda covered himself in pinetar in order to get a better grip on the ball because it was too cold. Yeah, and we had such great weather this April that a game the Mets played was dubbed the “garbage tornado”. Yeah, the weather has just been spectacular!
The Marlins in warm weather have scored around 5 runs per game, in cold weather they have scored something like 3.
This is true for every other team out there. The fact that the Marlins play in Florida should be an advantage for them, not disadvantage
Yeah, it has been a huge advantage. They have scored almost twice as many runs per game in Miami (and San Diego and the rest of the warm places they have played) as they have in cold games. Which is precisely what I have said…
Only one NL team has scored significantly more than the Marlins, and in warm weather the Marlins have scored even more runs than their current average. So that tells me they have a strong offense. Their pitching has also been strong. Strong offense + strong pitching = wins.
Marlins haven’t played in San Diego yet this year. The only other warm venue where they played is Atlanta, and they lost 2 out 3. Theres no weather factor.
You obviously missed that I said “in Miami”, so Pineda’s problems in NY and Bos and the Mets tornado game was against StL. Those games have ZERO to do with the Marlins. That is as relevant as someone in NY going to their basement because theres tornadoes in Mississippi.
We live in the wonderful world of the internet, so we can quickly check at how “held back by bad weather” the Marlins are:
-They played 13 games at home. A quick check shows the temps in Mia between 70-80 all month. So thats 13 games, with almost perfect weather
-Temps for their road games:
Was 58(Loss), 61(L), 67(L)
Phi 65(L), 72(L), 75(L)
Atl 81(L), 67(Win), 68(L)
NYM 52(L), 53(W), 56(L)
They’ve lost road games in 81, 72 and 75
They’ve won road games in 53 and 67
They’ve only had 4 game (out of 25) below 60 degrees. They’re record is 11-14. I’m not buying the ‘bad weather’ excuse. How about they’re just a Poor Road Team.
Let me put it this way, benching Mike Trout, the best position player in the game, for a replacement level player decreases your odds of winning a game by a few percentage points. If weather has 1% influence on a game, that means it is roughly on par with adding or subtracting a pretty good player from your lineup.
Like Pineda and the Tornado game above, Trout has nothing to do with the topic. The subject is the Marlins and their supposed poor play during cold games.
Let me put it this way, Game Time Temp and Road Record:
Temp . . . Record . . . Percent
50s ——- (1-3) ——- .250
60s ——- (1-5) ——- .200
70s ——- (0-2) ——- .000
80s ——- (0-1) ——- .000
*They are 0-5 in road games above 67 degrees.
They’re a terrible road team, who have actually played BETTER, in cold weather, on the road. Its that simple.
Throw all the analogies and irrelevant examples you want. I’m a numbers guy, and the stats say poor weather hasn’t hurt them, but playing on the road has killed them.
Okay, you want to debunk what I am saying with statistics? How about you try actually addressing what I am saying? Both the direct thing I said (they score more runs in warm weather than cold) and the indirect, implied argument that balls don’t travel as far in the cold. Also, the tertiary, and less obvious although just as important, lower humidity in the northern games.
Now look at the data. In their away games, they have scored .5 more runs per game in games 70 degrees or warmer as they did in games below 70 degrees. That is significant.
Okay, I’ll address your point, again. You keep talking about the Marlins as if they play in a vacuum. Newsflash: Every team is playing in cold weather. Temps don’t magically drop when the Marlins come to bat. They’re all being effect.
If you did the .5 run thing for the entire league, you’ll find that Marlins are probably quite average. So when the weather warms up EVERY team will be hitting better, not just the Marlins.
Now my point: Every cold weather game is played on the road (9). Almost all the warm weather games are played at home (12 out of 15). This gives the Marlins an artificial home field advantage, when calculating runs scored in all games. How about we remove the home games to even out the playing field:
Road Games above 70 degrees: 2.0 runs per game
Road Games below 70 degrees: 2.8 runs per game
If they are ‘so hurt by the weather’, why do they hit better in cold weather, on the road? That stat completely contradicts your point. Face the facts they’re just a poor road team, and no amount of warm weather will help that.
Marlins fan here and I don’t think weather is an issue we’ve just played terrible on the road that and Turner’s injury has played a large part. The replacements for him (Hand/Slowey) have pitched extremely poorly and unfortunately they have had to pitch on the road.
his wife and kid live in florida and it was a good move for him. i think he grew up in florida as well and has more family in the area
Craig has put up 6.1 offensive WAR in the last two years.
Patience.
He had 92 at bats….the time to worry is if hes still putting these numbers up after 292.
As good as Craig and for that matter Carpenter were the last few seasons, the guys in that lineup that opponents feared were Beltran and Holliday. Beltran’s gone and Holliday hasn’t hit with his usual power. It’s still early, but some guys are better when they aren’t counted on to be the guy.
After seeing AJP playing with the Sox, aka placeholder, I miss Salty.