With Instructional League underway in Arizona (casts look of disappointment toward Florida) and Fall League rosters likely about two weeks out, the time has come to line the coffers with data and re-worked scouting reports in preparation for another round of farm system audits. Especially at the up-the-middle positions, defense is both very important and also a bit of a black box for readers, as there aren’t many publicly available minor league defensive stats and so much of evaluating defense is visual. I’ve recently been working on a video deep dive on the position players currently graded as 50 FV prospects or better, specifically to evaluate their defense in detail. Here I’ve taken a pass at the shortstops, providing video supplements for the prospects who I’ve evaluated in the 55 FV tier and above. I’ve made changes to their defense and arm tool grades over on The Board as a result of this exercise, and highlight the instances where this has caused a change to the player’s overall FV grade in the analysis below.

I’ve cut the videos in such a way that you can see each shortstop making similar plays one right after another. The videos feature plays to their left where I want to see them flip their hips and throw, plays that show the extreme end of their range, backhand plays in the hole to their right, plays coming in on the grass, and double play attempts. The fewest balls in play I watched for an individual player was 36 (Colson Montgomery and Dyan Jorge) and the most was closer to 70 (Jackson Holliday, Carson Williams and Marcelo Mayer). Read the rest of this entry »

Data Engineer, Baseball Analytics

Location: Miami, FL

Position Summary:
The Miami Marlins are seeking a full-time Data Engineer for the Baseball Analytics department. The candidate will be responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing ETL processes that ingest, validate, and organize baseball data. The Data Engineer will support the information requirements of our analysts, coaches, and scouts. Strong applicants will have experience with modern ETL processes and database management, with extensive knowledge of both SQL and Python.

Essential Functions:

• Continuously improve the department’s access to information; design, develop, and optimize ETL processes to ingest data from new data sources.
• Improve completeness, cleanliness, and timeliness of existing data sources.
• Create production-quality Python and SQL scripts to automate data loading, using scalable and concise code practices.
• Maintain high data quality standards. Proactively identify, diagnose, and resolve data issues.
• Learn, extend, and improve the existing database architecture – ensuring data is well organized for end-users and easy to connect to other data sources.
• Maintain a version-controlled code repository of ETL scripts.
• Collaborate with Baseball Operations staff to understand our organization’s information needs.
• Prioritize workflows effectively and share relevant expertise to best support data users.

Qualifications & Requirements:

• Strong work ethic, attention to detail, and ability to self-direct.
• Passion for engineering development, creativity, intellectual curiosity.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated experience with SQL and Python.
• Demonstrated experience with ETL/ELT processes and database management.
• Experience working with data in various formats including JSON, CSV, etc.
• Experience with cloud computing platforms (Snowflake, GCP, Azure, etc.) is a plus.
• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent.
• Understanding of and passion for baseball and baseball research.
• Ability to work extended hours including evenings, weekends, and holidays.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender identity, marital or veteran status, or any other protected class.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Miami Marlins.

The Marlins began this season on an historic pace in one-run games. They won every single one of their first 12 such contests, besting a record that had stood for 51 years. Since then, they’ve played to a more modest 15-11 mark in those bouts, but their .711 winning percentage in such games on the whole would still tie them for the fifth-best in a single season since the Live Ball Era began in 1920 (min. 20 one-run games).

Last Thursday, my colleague Michael Baumann wrote a piece that got me thinking. Specifically, he found that of the three teams outperforming their Pythagorean (run differential-based) record by at least five games at the time, two — the Orioles and Brewers — had outstanding bullpens in one form or another. This idea isn’t new — it’s been hashed, and re-hashed, and re-hashed again. The Tigers, which have since joined that group of five-game overperformers, have also had a remarkably clutch relief corps. But the Marlins, outperforming their expected wins by six games, have a middling ‘pen by any measure. Marlins position players have come through in big moments more than expected, but they also haven’t wowed in those situations to the same extent that the Orioles’ crop of hitters have. Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie Morton just keeps chugging along. Three months shy of his 40th birthday, and in his 17th big-league season, the right-hander is 12-10 with a 3.54 ERA over 24 starts with the Atlanta Braves. His most recent outing was especially impressive. Relying heavily on his knee-buckling bender, but also topping out at 96.9 mph with his heater, he dominated the New York Yankees to the tune of six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts.

How much longer can he continue to defy Father Time and excel against baseball’s best hitters?

“I don’t think about that,” Morton replied in response to that question. “I think about, ‘When am I going to go home?’ I always thought the game was going to dictate when I went home. If you look at my career, there was no reason why I wouldn’t think that. There was no reason to think that I was going to start having the best years of my career at age 33, or that my best years would be in my late 30s. There was no reason to think I would still be throwing the ball like I am now. It would have been illogical.”

Morton’s career has indeed followed an unforeseeable path. From 2008-2016, playing primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he went 46-71 with a 4.54 ERA over 161 starts. Since his 2017 age-33 season, he has gone 82-40 with a 3.54 ERA over 185 starts. Morphing from “Ground Chuck” into more of a power pitcher played a major role in the turnaround, but whatever the reason, Morton went from mediocre to a mainstay in frontline rotations. Since his transformation, only six pitchers have started more games, and only two (Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer) have been credited with more wins. Read the rest of this entry »

Look at the top of the leaguewide standings and you’ll find both types of elite teams: First, the Braves, an all-conquering, all-chewing-up-and-spitting-out combine harvester that sits atop the standings. After them: an Orioles club that’s outplaying its Pythagorean record by eight games.

That’s not to take anything away from the Orioles, who are dogwalking the hardest division in baseball thanks to a dizzying collection of talented young hitters and the best bullpen in the sport. Besides, they don’t ask how — they ask how many. But this is yet another reboot of a classic from the generation prior; in 2012, the O’s romped to the playoffs with a 93–69 record and the run differential of an 82–80 team. Now they’re doing the same thing, with Félix Bautista as Jim Johnson, Gunnar Henderson as Manny Machado, and Kyle Bradish as… Wei-Yin Chen, I guess?

It’s not just the Orioles: the Marlins (minus-37 run differential) are beating the Cubs (plus-62) to the last Wild Card spot. The Brewers are 10 games over .500 with the run differential of a .500 team. Every year, it seems like a low-payroll team with a good bullpen smashes its expected record to smithereens and barges into the playoffs. Is there an actual pattern here, or is this just trivia? Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins, who acquired some thump earlier on Deadline Day in the form of Jake Burger, went out and acquired some more right after the bell rang, picking up Josh Bell in exchange for Jean Segura and prospect Kahlil Watson. Nearly simultaneously, news broke that the Marlins were trading Garrett Cooper and pitching prospect Sean Reynolds to the Padres for left-hander Ryan Weathers. (The Marlins are also paying down Cooper’s salary to the league minimum.)

Burger’s addition made Segura surplus to requirements; if the Marlins had seen enough of him, it made sense to trade him to the only team that loves slap hitters more than they do. But the Guardians are releasing Segura and in the process eating the remainder of his salary for 2023 and ’24 ($8.5 million), plus a $2 million buyout for ’25. In exchange, they pick up a prospect and jettison Bell’s even more expensive salary for next year. Here, I made a handy chart:

I explored the Marlins’ reasons for jettisoning Segura in the Burger piece, but it’s pretty easy reasoning to follow: They want to make the playoffs, and Segura is hitting .219/.277/.279.

The swap of first basemen is the most interesting piece of this trade for me. Both Cooper and Bell had highly decorated 2022 campaigns — the former made the All-Star team, and the latter won a Silver Slugger — but have disappointed in ’23. On the surface, this looks like the Marlins are swapping one moderately disappointing first baseman/DH for another more expensive one.

So why would the Marlins do this? I can think of a few reasons. First, Bell is a switch-hitter, and Cooper is a righty with similar weaknesses to Burger — namely, lots of strikeouts and relatively few walks. And Bell has attributes that make him more attractive than Cooper as a bounce-back candidate. He walks more, he strikes out less, he’s two years younger, and he has superior raw power, even if accessing it in games has always been an uncertain proposition.

Then there’s the contract. Cooper makes $3.9 million this year and is a pending free agent. Bell is in the first season of a two-year deal that pays him $16.5 million annually. If the Marlins consider Segura a sunk cost — i.e., if they were going to release him anyway — what they’ve done is essentially bought a one-year, $6 million flyer on Bell as a bounce-back candidate for 2024, assuming he doesn’t opt out. That strikes me as a pretty reasonable gamble.

From the Padres’ perspective, why would they want Cooper? First of all, they are only giving up Weathers. Yes, he is just 23, is a former top-10 pick, and is under team control until 2027. But he made his major league debut in the 2020 playoffs and has been given numerous opportunities to claim a spot on San Diego’s pitching staff over the three seasons that followed, and he simply has not done so. Right now, over 143 big league innings, he has a 5.73 ERA, a 5.54 FIP, and a K% of just 16.8. Maybe the potential that inspired the Padres to draft him is still in there, but if it is, they would’ve been able to access it by now if that were within their capability.

The Marlins, meanwhile, have made young change-of-scenery lefthanders into their side hustle over the past couple years, with Jesús Luzardo and A.J. Puk among their current examples. They’d have reason to be optimistic that they can right whatever is wrong with Weathers. But for the Padres? Now feels like a good time to let him go.

In exchange, San Diego gets a prospect, Reynolds (more on him later), plus Cooper. Earlier, I wrote about the Padres’ acquisition of Ji Man Choi, a player who was built to form the left-handed side of a platoon at either first base or DH. At the time, the most logical platoon partner for him seemed to be whichever of the team’s two catchers wasn’t wearing the tools of ignorance on that particular evening. Cooper is well-suited to that role. And with the Marlins kicking in a little over $1 million to even out the salaries, the Padres get to try him out basically for free.

As for Reynolds, he’s a 25-year-old conversion project currently at Triple-A. The 6-foot-8-inch righty was once a first baseman himself and has got mid-90s velocity with good feel for both a breaking ball and a changeup. The no. 22 prospect in Miami’s system before the trade, he’s hardly a headliner, but he’s close to the majors now and could be a useful big league reliever under the right circumstances. That, plus a bat the Padres could use, is a suitable return for a pitcher they can’t use.

Now for Cleveland. A cynical reading of this trade says the Guardians are dumping a disappointing contract for a moderately less expensive one. Two years at $16.5 million per isn’t a backbreaker for most ownership groups, but it is for the Dolans. They save about $9 million, all-in, by swapping Bell for the right to release Segura. Raise a banner.

But Watson is an interesting prospect. The no. 16 overall pick as a North Carolina high schooler in 2021, he has explosive tools and was the no. 49 global prospect on the 2022 preseason top 100. Switch-hitting middle infielders who can get on base don’t come along every day. Since then, unfortunately, he has been suspended by the Marlins for using his bat to pantomime shooting an umpire and failed to hold his own against older competition in the Midwest League. As is the case with so many talented high school position players, Watson still needs to prove he can hit professional pitching. At the time of the trade, he was the no. 8 prospect on our Marlins list, with a FV of 45.

For taking on the less useful and slightly expensive end of a bilateral salary dump, Cleveland could’ve done worse. The modal outcome for Watson is probably that he doesn’t have a meaningful big league career, so in that respect acquiring him is a risk. But if he even comes close to figuring things out and reaching his potential, he’ll be the best player in the trade, unless Bell gets first-half-of-2022 hot again. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot going on here.

If I were to criticize this trade from Cleveland’s perspective, it would be on the grounds that the Guardians got cheaper and worse while they were a game out of a playoff spot. Yes, they’re under .500 and half their rotation (the good half, in fact) is on the IL, but they are just as much in the playoff race than the Padres are. And as disappointing as Bell has been so far this year, if the Guardians had a better internal replacement, they would’ve used him already. That’s disappointing. The rebuttal to that argument is that Bell has been so close to replacement level that losing him doesn’t hurt that much, and Watson and that $9 million in savings could be meaningful down the road. So it goes.

The Marlins have a decent shot at getting better now, the Guardians might get better in the long term, and the Padres stay about the same but with a player pool that better suits their immediate needs. Plus everyone’s accountants get some extra work. Everyone has the opportunity to win.

This past offseason, the Marlins prioritized contact in free agency and trades, acquiring Yuli Gurriel, Jean Segura, and Luis Arraez to fill out an infield that already had Joey Wendle. I think we can all agree that results on those moves has been mixed. Nevertheless, the Marlins currently sit at 57–50 and are eyebrows-deep in the playoff race. The bubble season notwithstanding, Miami hasn’t made the playoffs since 2023; bucking that trend would mean the world for the Marlins.

In pursuit of that goal, Miami shifted its focus and acquired Jake Burger from the White Sox. Picture Segura or Gurriel in their prime, or Arraez now. Burger is the opposite of that: a hitter with unbelievable power who strikes out more in a week than Arraez does in a month. In exchange, Miami sent left-handed pitching prospect Jake Eder to Chicago. This exchange of Jakes will probably go under the radar given the big names who were moved, or at least discussed, this deadline, but it’s a fascinating trade all the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Figuratively speaking, Bryce Elder is pitching well under par. In 21 starts for the Atlanta Braves, the 24-year-old right-hander is 8-2 with a 3.18 ERA. Killing worms is his M.O. Relying heavily on a modified two-seamer, Elder has a 53.6% ground-ball rate that ranks fifth-best among qualified hurlers. Earlier this month, he was named an N.L. All-Star in his first full big-league season.

When he’s not sinking fastballs, he’s sinking putts. Atlanta’s fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft, the University of Texas product is an accomplished golfer who shoots in the mid-to-low 70s. More on that in a moment.

Elder learned his sinker late in his freshman year of college. He’d thrown a four-seamer in high school, but lacking plus velocity — his heater was, and remains, in the 90-mph range — an adjustment was in order. His pitching coach showed him a one-seam grip, he threw a few off the mound, and the dividends soon became apparent.

The improvement was evident in the numbers. The Decatur, Texas native had a 5.55 ERA as a four-seam freshman. As a one-seam sophomore, he had a 2.93 ERA. As a junior — this in the truncated COVID season — that number was 2.08. Success in pro ball followed, but stagnation was never part of the plan. In a continued effort to get better, the righty subsequently tweaked his sinker grip. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength up the middle is important to any contender, but with so many teams still in the hunt for a playoff spot, it’s no surprise some of them are have some weak spots. Perhaps it’s easier for a team to convince itself that the metrics aren’t capturing the entirety of a weak-hitting player’s defense if they’re playing a premium position, which seems to be the case at both catcher and center fielder.

While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. Interestingly enough, two of the seven teams below the WAR cutoff for right field also make the list for left field: one because it’s far below, and the other because it’s right on the line. I’m listing the capsules in order of their left field rankings first while noting those two crossover teams with an asterisk. As always, I don’t expect every team here to go out and track down upgrades before the August 1 deadline, but these are teams to keep an eye upon. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are through July 26, but team won-loss records and Playoff Odds are through July 27. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets and Marlins making a trade for much-needed bullpen help? If you told April me that was happening, I’d completely believe you. That New York bullpen looks shaky without Edwin Díaz at the top. Past me is in for a surprise, of course. It turns out that the Mets are out of the race this year and the Marlins are making a run at the Wild Card. Yesterday, the Mets sent David Robertson to Miami in exchange for Marco Vargas and Ronald Hernandez, two teenage hitting prospects.

Miami’s greatest need is not in the bullpen. They have one of the worst offenses in baseball – not just among playoff teams, but across the league as a whole. But their bullpen, which started the season on a tear, has been remarkably un-clutch in recent weeks. From the beginning of the season through a month ago, that ‘pen added around 3.5 wins worth of win probability, one of the best units in the game. In the last month, they’ve cost the Marlins around 1.5 wins, one of the worst results. For a team that’s scoring so little, holding on to every last lead is of utmost importance.

The Dylan Floro/Jorge López swap from earlier this week was, to be frank, not much help. It seems to me that the Marlins got the worse of the two players, at least for this year. But adding Robertson is a huge step in the right direction. He’ll slot into the closer role in Miami immediately, with Tanner Scott serving as his high-leverage deputy. A ton of power arms follow, none of whom are without risk, but that’s just how bullpens go these days. Read the rest of this entry »