SB Nation User Blog: fishfan24

Beckett, Blister

fishfan24 — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:19:54 -0000

Josh went down with a torn finger flap. As great a talent as he is he just can't win, can he? I bring it up here for two reasons:

The other day on Boog's show I heard Peter Gammons say that he was sad for the Marlins when he saw Beckett, Penny, and other former Marlins doing so well. He was saying that we should have kept the Penny, Pavano, Beckett, AJ, and Willis (the big 5) all together for many more years. I can't help but disagree a bit. Of course it's ideal to keep your best players, but when I look around I see mostly very good decisions. Penny is doing well again this year, but had some down times. Pavano has been a joke, AJ not much better, and Beckett continues to be saddled with problems. Other teams can afford these problems and mistakes, but the Marlins can't. Not that our young pitchers aren't getting hurt as well, but at least they aren't getting paid tens of millions to do it.

The other reason I bring it up is a concern for Sergio. I hope that he has this situation under control. He looked great in his last start, and I hope he can become a consistent starter for us, and not fall prey to finger issues as well.

It's done

fishfan24 — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 15:15:10 -0000

I don't have time to write this up, but for those that prowl this site, here's the info:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15668276.htm

The Marlins fired first-year manager Joe Girardi this morning, ending an acrimonious and sometimes confrontational relationship with the Marlins owner and front office members....Girardi met Tuesday morning with club officials. The meeting was described as ``short, brief.'

Where are they now? Adrian Gonzalez

fishfan24 — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:54:32 -0000

While I think we'd all agree that trading Adrian Gonzalez for Ugie "Machete Man" Urbina was worth it at the time, I noticed today that the kid is doing pretty well for San Diego (which, of course, in German means 'a whale's vagina').

He's hitting .303 with 20 HR an OBP of .353 and a SLG of .514... all the while looking like their 1B of the future as well as today.

Would I trade our World Series in 2003 for him? No way. But I think it's helpful to keep in perspective what you do give up when making trades to "win now". When it works, and you "win", then it's great and worth it. But it's always the risk you take.

I wouldn't mind having Adrian on our team right now (no offense to Jacobs and Helms). Although, besides batting average (which is an iffy stat anyway) they as a team are out-performing Adrian.

Maybe this was a wasted post now that I think about it. Well, I already wrote it, so I'll post it anyway. Good job front office!

Go Marlins.

A quick study in contrast at the trade deadline

fishfan24 — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:51:49 -0000

Or... "why we should love our owndership."

Today was the deadline for trades in the MLB, in case you hadn't heard. Looks like many teams were busy, while others (like the Florida Marlins) were relatively quiet.

Why the lack of activity on the part of the Fish? It's because we're doing nearly everything right, and there is no need to change our strategy at this point. Now, compare that to the Phillies.

They've had to gut their team, even though they are ahead of us in the standings. By being conservative this year, and knowing ourselves, we are not "buyers" or "sellers" but instead in the position of accepting a trade if it's in our favor, but not having to force one to save money or suddenly fill a hole to compete.

These guys do a great job, even if they infuriate me.

Poll

How has our leadership done in regards to player personnel.

They Stink

4 votes

They should win executives of the year.

12 votes

I guess they dont' quite stinl, but it's not like they should win executives of the year or anything.

2 votes

18 votes | Poll has closed

So guess who I ran into at a bar...

fishfan24 — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 07:44:37 -0000

So I'm in Chicago on a trip for school stuff (to keep a long story short) and guess who I run into at a bar. Only one of my favorite Marlins of all time, one of the people most responsible for our World Series Championship, and probably one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. When I ran into him, I felt so guilty trying to talk to him. You see, some jerk had just spent five minutes harrassing him and trying to get some girl to show her boobs to him. All of this made him very uncomfortable, and he just tried to chuckle a bit. So here I come, and I just had to try and talk to him. I approached him outise a bar called Rock-it! in downtown Chicago. He's leaning against the wall after having just fended off this jerk. I say :"hi. I'm from Miami and I've been a big fan of yours for a while. Thanks for what you did for Miami. He said hi, shook my hand and said thanks. Then I asked if I could take a picture, he said yeah, and was pretty impressed with my camera phone. Yeah, a millionare was impressed with my camera phone. In retrospect that's pretty cool. Anyway, I'm honestly trying to fill space and build suspense.

Thanks JP. What a nice guy, here or Chicago.

Reminiscing

fishfan24 — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 03:44:50 -0000

Or, how Dan Uggla became one of the best second-basemen in baseball...

I was looking back at some old comments today and found some stuff that, in retrospect, is pretty cool.

For one this little seemingly innocuous post seemed to portend nothing. Especially not an All-Star

Later, during Spring Training, Wiggins put up this post talking about how the Spring numbers were too good to be true. Well, he was mostly right (Abercrombie has been a nightmare and Hammer is not hitting .500 anymore). In two notable cases, though, player's stats have been better than their seemingly gaudy status at that time.

Dan Uggla AVG OBP SLG OPS
Spring: 0.323, 0.333, 0.484, 0.817
Season: 0.311, 0.368, 0.519, 0.887
Difference in OPS = +0.07

Miguel Cabrera
Spring: 0.303, 0.471, 0.375, 0.817
Season: 0.342, 0.434, 0.571, 1.005
Difference in OPS = +0.159

Given those numbers, I can now laugh when I read "Dan Uggla may not be a shoo-in at second base."

I <3 Owl
Baseball >>>>> Med School

By request: Shoulders

fishfan24 — Tue, 23 May 2006 07:55:08 -0000

In a previous post craig asked me to comment about shoulder injuries, like the one affecting Hanley. Let me start with the usual disclaimer:

I am NOT a physician yet (2nd year med student), and even if I was, this information should not be construed as medical advice, or replace the expert opinion of a personal visit with a physician.

Sorry about that, I'm sure Craig understands ;-) If you want to read a little about shoulder injuries, click read more.

Shoulder injuries are notoriously complex and have a high rate of reccurence.

I hate shoulder injuries.

This is mainly because the shoulder is one of the craziest joints in the body, held by a small ligament, weak capsule, and 4 separate muscles, with little to no bony attachment of its own. Also, it has a high degree of instability. In fact, it's actually two separate joints entirely, the acromioclavicular joint, and the glenohumeral joint. Basically the AC joint goes from the scapula to the clavicle, and is the only body attachment to the axial (main) skeleton, while the glenohumeral joint has a partial round surface creating a ball-and-socket joint.

All this is neccesary to give the joint the incredible mobility that it has.

The problem is, most shoulder sprains at the glenohumeral joint (sprain is another word for small tear in ligamentous tissue), if they become severe, will eventually requrie shoulder surgery to shorten the rotator cuff muscles. Since it was a shoulder dislocation, it was probably more glenohumeral than AC.

Given that he's had more then one dislocation, it's my guess he'll have to have surgery eventually. Luckily he's not a picther, but he is a SS, and the motion of throwing a baseball is the absolute worst possible position to put an arm into for a person who is prone to anterior disloctions of the shoulder.

Short version: he'll be OK for now, but given his occupation, he will most likely eventually need surgery, which will probably be successful (given the he'll probably have a great surgeon and rehab program).

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

For more info on shoulder injuries, check out: this article. After reading it, I think I should have just linked to it originally, since it's a much better explanation than mine, but oh well. I guess I'll just submit this.

Update [2006-5-23 4:0:17 by fishfan24]:I just now realized that it's his left shoulder. This is good news, since the worst position is throwing the ball not swinging. It's still likely he'll eventually need surgery, but not as certain as I originally thought it was.

I'm baaccckkk

fishfan24 — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:35:05 -0000

There seem to be a lot of new people around the site, which is cool. I feel like I've been gone so long that I'm the new guy. In fact, I was on Spring Break.

Before Mike gets any fancy ideas about co-eds that's not (entirely) the case.

In fact, I was in Ecuador on a medical mission trip with my medical school and some professors and volunteer physicians. Believe it or not, the Florida Marlins are not very big in the Amazon, nor is MLB in general. I have not really had the opportunity to follow what is happening at all. In fact, I don't know anything. Our current record, who's playing well, who's been sucking it up, anything! All I do know is that Colombo is at the top of the ichthyomancy standings, and that Dr F has apparently become quite the player as well.

What I am happy about is a welcome home by Day Baseball. It was quite a tiring trip (we saw over 2000 patients in 5 towns), and I had a few mishaps along the way to make it more adventurous. Had my passport and all my money stolen. One small piece of advice, don't travel to a Latin American country during Holy Week... the US embassy was closed which forced me to extend my trip.

Anyway, I'll end this here since most people aren't interested, but I thought Craig and Wiggins might want to know why I hadn't been around.

While I'm at it, I'll go ahead a make a "standing" pick (we still do those?) of The Mig, and an AAB pick of a bench-cleaing brawl.

The Red Sox to field the 2003 WS Marlins?

fishfan24 — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 08:55:50 -0000

OK, so that might be exagerating a bit, but this recent news caught me a little by surprise. The Red Sox appear to be finalizing a feal with World Series hero Alex Gonzalez to fill in their hole at short-stop.

This according to The Boston Herald. If the Sox add Gonzalez to the mix it will make for three Florida Marlins from the 2003 roster on their team including 2003 1st Half Season MVP (In my opinion) Mike Lowell, WS Game 4 hero Gonzalez, and WS MVP/Yankee killer Joshua Patrick Beckett.

Why get creative when you can pick winners I guess.

Alex Gonzalez will probably benefit from the wall in left given his pull stroke, though his HR numbers might not since he doesn't hit the ball very high. His defense will likely fall off a bit now that he doesn't have Luis Castillo at second base, but he should look great turning that 5-4-3 with Mikey at the hot corner.

The Red Sox also jettisoned former Marlin Guillermo Mota to the Indians in a trade for Coco Crisp, but will likely retain Matt Clement and Rudy Seanez, giving them a total of 5 former Marlins on the roster, with 3 from the 2003 Season.

I'm going to hate watching these guys play for other teams.

The Train gets paid

fishfan24 — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:17:26 -0000

I just saw a blurb in the MiamiHerald about Dontrelle Willis. Apparently the team execs have not completely lost their minds, and have rewarded Willis with the richest one-year contract ever for a first time arbitration eligible player.

Dontrelle will be paid $4.35 million next year, not including incentives such as winning the Cy Young or Silver Slugger awards, or being named to the NL-Allstar team.

The only downside is that we did not wrap him up longer-term. I guess for a fiscally conservative management team, this is the best that they could do. It's better than nothing, but not quite what I hoped for; though it's exactly what I expected and voted for in the poll.

Update [2006-1-16 20:20:40 by fishfan24]:Here's a link to a better write-up than the herald one, from MLB.com.