The Miami Marlins had a really bad decade in the 2010s, especially later on. From tragically losing José Fernandez in a boat crash to being on the wrong side of major trades, the Marlins were put in a bad spot in 2018 and 2019 as they had an abysmal .373 winning percentage. Those heartbreaking moments have led many to wonder, how would the Marlins be if they didn’t lose any of those guys? Well today, I will attempt to project what the Marlins record would be if they had better fortunes.
The Marlins losses are the first thing that should be noted, as they lost a significant amount of players. The obvious one that we already noted was the death of Fernandez, who finished top ten in Cy Young voting twice, coming in at 3 and 7 in 2013 and 2016, respectively. He would’ve only been 28 by the end of 2020 and possibly had some more amazing seasons under his belt. Trades were also made that they, as of now, lost, Giancarlo Stanton was moved to the Yankees, Christian Yelich to the Brewers, Marcell Ozuna to the Cardinals, and J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies, among others. Miami failed to get a top one hundred prospect in the Stanton trade, which should’ve drawn more value as he was coming off of a monstrous MVP season with a 158 wRC+ and a 7.3 WAR. Christian Yelich ended up winning MVP in 2018 and may very well have won it in 2019 if he had not gotten hurt. The Marlins didn’t completely lose that trade, however, as Yamamoto, Brinson, and Diaz have made contributions to the major league team with Harrison close in AAA. The Ozuna trade was very similar to the Stanton trade as he was a candidate for MVP, but not many top prospects were brought in. The Realmuto trade brought in top RHP prospect Sixto Sanchez and replacement catcher Jorge Alfaro who is not near the level of Realmuto. Losing all of those players caused the team to be worse as a whole and this can be shown combined stat totals for offense, defense, and pitching.
The offense has been hurt tremendously by these moves, last year the Marlins had only 3 regulars with a wRC+ of 100 or higher and a team wRC+ of 79, which was second-worst in 2019. By tracking and finding totals of the Miami team without those trades, I was able to figure out that they would’ve had a projected wRC+ of 109 and 6 regulars with a 100 wRC+ or more in 2020. That 109 would’ve been fifth in 2019, a huge jump for this very underwhelming lineup today. They would also have a projected .337 wOBA that would’ve been sixth-best in 2019.
The defense also improved as well without those moves. The Marlins total UZR would’ve been 8.1 compared to -1.0, that would be a jump from 16th to 12th, not a huge difference, but it is one nonetheless. For catchers, I decided to use DRS as they do not have a UZR. It came out to be a projected 15 DRS combined for Realmuto and Cervelli, fourth in 2019 and the real Marlins had a -7 DRS which was twenty-first in the majors. The position players stats can be shown below (projections from FanGraphs Depth Charts):
The totals of the wOBA and wRC+ are not just the total average of the stat for each player, that would not give me the right total number as all players played a different number of games. So, I weighted each player’s stat to the projected amount of games played and then divided it out by the sum of games played, which was 1327. I made the 2019 UZR/G per projected games as UZR is a counting stat and so, I did what the title says, took the player's 2019 UZR, divided it by the amount of games played in 2019, and then multiplied it to give me an UZR the amount of games they are projected to play. The WAR and UZR are the added number of all players, with the exception of the UZR for catchers, as they do not have a UZR.
The pitchers would also improve as well, this can be shown through their ERA and FIP. There were two main pitchers that were lost: Jose Fernandez and A.J. Ramos. Fernandez would be the no-doubt ace of their staff and if he was still there and would improve it from below-average to good, as their FIP would go from 4.79 and 20th in baseball to 4.10 and 9th. Their ERA would do the same thing as well, but not as much as they’d be 10th in baseball from 16th with a .41 difference. The bullpen would also improve in FIP and ERA as well. They’d have an average bullpen FIP being at 14th compared to a dismal 27th. The same can be said for their ERA as well as they’d be at the same rank with a 4.29 from a 4.97 and 25th in baseball. The pitching staff could possibly be even better than this, with an improved defense and the fact that Fernandez could’ve developed even more. The pitching stats can be shown below (projections from FanGraphs Depth Charts):
*Fernandez’s stats were taken from his final season in 2016 as there are no projected stats for 2020.
**Cabrera’s and Peter’s stats are from ZiPs projections due to the small number of games and IP that FanGraphs projected for him.
The ERA, FIP, K/9, and BB/9 totals were calculated the same way as the hitter’s wOBA and wRC+, by weighting each number through their IP and dividing by the total IP (689.33 and 446). The WAR/162 was calculated by taking the total projected WAR and dividing it by the total amount of games started, then multiplied by 162. I did this as the total amount of games started wasn’t equal to 162, so since WAR is a counting stat, I wanted to get it on a full season scale. This is my same reasoning for WAR/600 IP, since the projected total of IP was 446, I wanted to get it to a more average number for total reliever innings, which is about 600.
Now that we have figured out where the Marlins offense, defense, and pitching would’ve stacked up against the rest of the league, we can project how many wins they may have gotten. The win total that I projected was made by taking the combined WAR of all of their players and adding 50 to it, since 50 is the projected replacement level win total. By doing this I came to a projected 2020 Marlins record of 94-68, the best regular season in their franchise’s history and an NL East division crown. They would also be projected for 2nd in the NL and tied for 3rd in MLB with the Yankees. Not only would they be good, but the NL East as a whole would be extremely competitive as the Phillies would be the projected worst team with 77 wins, a total that could easily be third in any other division. The projected NL East standings are shown here:
*4 wins are subtracted from the Phillies total as they would not have Realmuto, who accounted for 4.4 WAR
Of course, all of this is just hypothetical and everything all players would’ve had to develop the exact same way that they did for this projection to be right. Realmuto may not have been as good defensively and therefore the pitching wouldn’t be as good, Yelich maybe wouldn’t have blossomed into the star he is today if he stayed, or the front office maybe would’ve had to move their stars either way due to money. But there are also possibilities that the Marlins could’ve been better, Fernandez could’ve been the best pitcher in baseball, the pitcher’s stats could’ve been better as a whole than their projection due to improved defense and catching, or the Marlins front office maybe would’ve decided that they could go and add more players to make the team even better, there are endless possibilities. There may not be a way to for sure track how good this team may have been, but this is just a point to show that if all of the players stayed the same course, they maybe would be one of the best teams in baseball today.
The player projections are from ZiPS, standings projections from FanGraphs, trades are from the FanGraphs Roster Resource, and all stats are from FanGraphs.
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