How Bad Will the Marlins Outfield Actually Be?
No matter what you think about the Marlins’ rebuild, there’s no getting around the fact that they’re rebuilding. Or, to put it in Derek Jeter’s words, building. The Marlins had what might’ve been baseball’s best outfield, but it’s been completely dismantled, and then some. Outfielder Giancarlo Stanton was traded. Outfielder Marcell Ozuna was traded. Outfielder Christian Yelich was traded. Infielder Dee Gordon was traded, and moved to the outfield. You could say the Marlins have traded four starting outfielders, then, which doesn’t seem like something that’s normally possible, but here we are, and the regular season is going to be rough.
From the Marlins’ perspective, 2018 hardly matters anymore. That is, in terms of major-league success. It’s going to be a bad season, and all they’ll care about is player development, and making more moves. I don’t think the Marlins much care if they win 50 or 60 or 70 games. This being a season like any other, though, we can still analyze the Marlins, for our own fun. I’m sure the team understands the numbers will be ugly. Just how ugly might they be?
This post is interactive. Following the text will be one single poll.
Even though spring training is finally underway, the offseason isn’t really over yet. There are transactions yet to be completed. And for the time being, on FanGraphs, all we have are the Steamer projections — we’re still waiting on the full ZiPS roll-out. Those two points being made, I’d like to show you a plot. Here are, as of this writing, the 2018 team outfield WAR projections, combining all three positions. I won’t give you a hint about where to find the Marlins. The hunt is the fun!
Yeah, the Marlins are in last. Of course the Marlins are in last. They’ve traded all the good ones. Their combined projected WAR right now is a hard-to-fathom 0.6. Overall, the Marlins rank 30th. In left field, they rank 28th. In center field, they rank 26th. In right field, they rank 30th. My question to you is, which do you think will be higher — the Marlins’ combined outfield WAR, or the lowest individual WAR posted by one of the four outfielders they’ve traded away?
That’s the poll. Before the poll, I should provide some information. If you feel like you’re not sure what’s going on in the Marlins outfield, you’re not alone. Importantly, they did acquire Lewis Brinson, as part of the return for Yelich. They still have Derek Dietrich, who might play a corner. There’s been talk about using Garrett Cooper in the outfield. Magneuris Sierra came over from the Cardinals in the Ozuna move. And 2018 should bring the big-league debut of Braxton Lee. Furthermore, the Marlins are bargain shopping, reportedly thinking about Melky Cabrera or Jon Jay. I might as well note that Rafael Ortega is another guy hanging around. He was very bad a couple seasons ago, but he does make contact.
You already know what Steamer thinks about the group. Dietrich isn’t much of a defender, and he could be traded or moved to another position. Cabrera or Jay could be traded in the middle of the year, were one of them to sign, and Cabrera has been replacement level in two of the past three seasons, and also three of the past five. Brinson didn’t hit in a 2017 cup of coffee. Neither did Sierra, really. Lee has yet to play above Double-A.
But for every pessimistic outlook, there’s something that’s at least a little bit positive. What could be more hopeful than youth, right? Right now, Brinson is 23. Sierra is 21, and Lee is 24. Each of them has played center field, so they have young athleticism and defense. And Brinson is one of baseball’s better prospects, having just put up a 146 wRC+ in Triple-A. He is a definite major-league player, and he’s got a shot to be the 2018 National League Rookie of the Year. Sierra is a speed-and-defense guy, which gives him a certain useful foundation. And while Lee isn’t very well known, he was just 30% better than the average Double-A hitter. He ran an OBP of nearly .400. He has speed and discipline, which could allow for a smooth transition. For all I know, he might be an average big-leaguer by June.
You can see something in the youth, if you squint. Brinson alone might make a huge impact. And Cooper might be a useful slugger, even if he’s playing out of position. Dietrich, too, should be some kind of positive. The Marlins might not be thinking about the short-term, but they’ll still give the opportunities to the players who appear to most deserve them. You’re almost inclined to regress them up, if that makes sense.
That’s the Marlins. Now for the ex-Marlins. Here’s what Steamer sees for 2018.
- Stanton: 6.3 WAR
- Yelich: 3.9
- Ozuna: 3.9
- Gordon: 1.7
It seems like that might be low on Gordon. Which makes some sense, because he’s an atypical player, which introduces something of a forecasting challenge. Here’s what happened a year ago.
- Stanton: 6.9 WAR
- Yelich: 4.5
- Ozuna: 4.8
- Gordon: 3.3
Gordon is still the low guy. Still, he had a strong season. For a further frame of reference, here is each player’s performance over the past three seasons, expressed in terms of WAR per 600 plate appearances.
- Stanton: 5.1
- Yelich: 3.6
- Ozuna: 2.9
- Gordon: 3.2
Now it’s Ozuna who brings up the rear. His number is still good! But, finally, here is each player’s lowest single-season WAR, since 2015.
- Stanton: 1.8 WAR
- Yelich: 2.4
- Ozuna: 1.2
- Gordon: 1.0
This is just as important as the other stuff. Of course, all four players are at least pretty good. Not a single one of them has yet celebrated his 30th birthday. But every projection has positive and negative error bars, and what this question asks about is the worst 2018 season from any one of four players. That’s four times the likelihood of something going wrong. Taken individually, we’d probably all think these players will be productive moving forward. But do we think they’ll *all* be productive moving forward? How good are the actual chances of that?
They’re actually probably still okay. But, as recently as 2015, Ozuna simply struggled. Didn’t put it together. Stanton has had several injury problems, and his 2016 season was below his usual standard. Gordon missed half of 2016 because of a PED suspension. Maybe that’s unlikely to happen again. But, who knows! Gordon’s suspension was shocking the first time around. Gordon also, you should remember, is going to play center field for the first time. Maybe he’s the weak link here. Or maybe you just think someone will get significantly hurt. Could just be a fluke. Flukes happen all the time. With a group of four, negative probabilities are greater. I don’t want to keep pushing this angle, because I don’t want to bias the responses, but I just want to make clear what’s being asked, and what’s reasonable to consider. All of the ex-Marlins are good. But, you know. Life. You never know who’ll be the next Alex Gordon.
There’s nothing left for me to do here. The rest is in your hands. Thank you all for your participation.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Bad. Really bad. The Marlins just hope Brinson improves over the season to offset the disaster in right field.
If for some reason (trades of various sorts) neither Dietrich or Prado plays much in left field, the whole outfield WAR might be negative.
I voted the combined 2018 outfield WAR being greater.
I figured that, as a likely outcome, if the Marlins signed a replacement level FA (2.0 WAR) and gave some youth time and they struggled (1.0 WAR apiece), that would be 4.0 WAR, more than I expect Gordon to put up.
“Replacement level,” by definition, is 0 WAR. I agree that the Marlins will cobble together something that outpaces one unexpected struggling/injured OF
I thought like tb.25 that 2.0 was “replacement level”….where did I read that? 0.0 obviously makes sense but i KNOW I saw 2.0 somewhere.
2.0 is an “average” player
*everyday (non-catcher) position player
Yea I misspoke. I meant a league average FA. Nobody would ever sign a replacement level FA.
Correction: league-average FA. I misspoke. I meant average lol.
Nobody would sign a replacement level FA.
People sign replacement level players all the time! They’re so easy to find! Trevor Plouffe, for example, just signed today.
I don’t think they’ll sign a league-average player. Those dudes cost ~$8M a season, which would make ’em very pricey for the Marlins.
I guess today everybody is taking things literally. Didn’t think I had to be this specific on a MARLINS outfield article.
No rebuilding team trying to save money would waste some on a replacement level FA.
ha, you mean “average.” They might sign a replacement level player at very low cost to just fill a position of need.
Replacement level FAs cost the league minimum. They’re dirt cheap.
Really here, excluding injury, it comes down to whether you believe Gordon will be historically atrocious defensively in CF or not. Given that he is going up the defense spectrum, even if he’s just mildly bad defensively, he’ll put up a solid WAR figure. With his speed, there’s a potential for him to be at least an average if not plus defender in CF. If he does that, his value will only go up.
I suppose you could argue that Ozuna will suddenly revert back to his old ways of never walking and not hitting for much power, but I find that highly unlikely.
For whatever it’s worth, I feel very good about Gordon’s conversion chances. And I think, as a consequence, we’re going to see a few more of these moves down the road.
Say, Kolten Wong to CF? (2016?)
Whether he’s going up the defensive spectrum or not is irrelevant, because the requirements of 2B and CF are completely distinct.
The real kicker here is estimating the chance that one of the four traded outfielders will be injured and miss a significant amount of playing time. If they’re all healthy for the full season I think I’m about 90% confident in predicting the Marlins lose; but there’s probably something like, I don’t know, a 20% chance? that at least one misses so much playing time it becomes a real horse race.
I went with the Marlins, simply because the chances of one of three or four players having a breakout or one of four players having a really bad or injured year strikes me as too high to bet against.
That, plus we don’t yet know who will actually be playing in the Marlin’s outfield. It won’t be anyone good, but it may be a prospect with a real upside.
Yeah, Brinson could look like either of three Taylors:
2016 Michael
2017 Michael
2017 Chris
And I would be entirely unsurprised.
I think they have an opportunity to sign a guy like Jose Bautista and hope for a bounceback, so they can sell him at the deadline. A semi-bounced back Bautista can probably add 1+ WAR by July, and that would go a long way towards getting the collective group above the lowest of the four.
What on earth would lead the Marlins to sign Jose Bautista? Guy looks all sorts of done as a hitter and can’t really play the field any more. The Marlins are making no pretense of competing and as the trade market has shown in recent years, old guys on short deals don’t get much in trade anymore. Heck, young guys on short deals don’t get much anymore. The Tigers got very little for JD Martinez for example.
It would not surprise anyone if the Fish sign some veteran placeholder to take an OF spot this year, I just can’t see Bautista being the guy.
I have no idea why they would do it, but team do all kinds of weird things.
I would much rather try and pick up some post-prospect who flamed out and see how they do. Generally speaking, I like it when teams in this position try to give the Aaron Altherrs of the world another chance instead of signing Michael Saunders.
Heck, I’d even see if I could trade for Jabari Blash just to see if he can hack it (pun intended) in the big league.
What would Bautista be worth in trade, even assuming he bounced back significantly? The JD Martinez “package” isn’t very appealing. I’d rather give the PT to a young guy.
I think not expecting the totality of the Marlins outfield to exceed the worst of the traded away players, especially considering the chances at least one of them misses significant injury time, is getting a little too cute. They’re going to be bad, but *that* bad seems like a longshot.
A couple of these guys have fairly high defensive floors, plus there’s still a shot they get another guy in exchange for Realmuto. And look at the White Sox, they ran out god knows whom for a season in 2017 (OF WAR leaders were Delmonico/Engel/Garcia) and still almost made it to three WAR…that trio certainly *seems* worse than what the Marlins have on hand.
– correction, I think I was looking at the White Sox 2018 depth chart. 2017 had them at something like 4.0 WAR between Garcia/Engel/Garcia, almost all of which came from the Avisail Garcia.
Note that the Marlins have the ability to change playing time to account for over-performance (or under-projection), so it’s safe to expect a lot more than -0.9 WAR out of right field. While no *specific* player looks to be any good (hence the dismal projection), the best of ~4 guys projected near replacement-level (plus any number of minor leaguers below, or some unexpected castoff) will probably at least be okay. And, come June, the best one will be playing.
But Stanton/Yelich/Ozuna/Gordon can’t reroll the dice like that; if Gordon gets hurt or underperforms, we can’t (for the purposes of our silly game) try a second, lesser Gordon to keep the numbers up.
Dee P. Gordon says otherwise, much as he wishes one of his other 24 clones could have been the one befallen by his plight.
And here I thought the 2017 Giants OF was atrocious.
It was.
And yet the Marlins are projected to be even worse!
I think it all hinges on how Brinson comes out this year. We’ve seen some guys come out and rake fresh out of the minors, and he’s got a good track record. If he racks up 1.5-2 wins himself, the rest of the OF can scrape up .5-1 wins and hopefully outduel Dee P. Gordon.
Problem is, they might just hold him back for service time considerations.
That won’t come to more than a month, though.
I picked the Marlins and the main reason for that is that when you have a revolving door of players like this, the odds of finding someone who has a breakout season are higher. The 90th percentile outcomes for some of these players are league-average performances. the Marlins will get to cycle through them and presumably find them.
Most players dont actually just hit their mean projections. Some will come under, and wont get any playing time, and the others will come in over, and will get the majority. In the end, I bet the Marlins get 3 or 4 wins from their combined outfielders, because they won’t play Dietrich or Sierra all year if they’re godawful, and all it takes is some AAAA player having his career year to take the job.
A Ramon Flores type?
Hell, the 90th percentile outcome for Brinson is pretty damn high – something like 2017 Aaron Hicks.
Dietrich is a good player, he’ll probably be worth 2 wins alone based on his career norms. Not sure why Dietrich stopped being a FG favorite after one subpar hitting season (wRC+ 99 still worth 1.5wins).
Extremely bad.
I’m surprised at how even the voting results are right now (1:32 pm). The lowest WAR total from Stanton and co is 6.4, which means that the Marlins’ OF would have to average ~2.2 WAR per position to top that. The only way I see that happening is a combination of over-performance and optimal usage from all the scenarios Jeff listed in his article (which includes using Dietrich and Cooper for around 900 PAs in corner outfield positions). Even if you do that and figure replacement level from Sierra and Lee, instead of the negative WAR they’re projected for, you can only find 4.8 WAR there. I guess giving some of those plate appearances to Jon Jay would help get it close…but, man, that looks brutal right now – and that’s kind of fun!
The first 10-15 minutes had a 70-25-5 ratio of votes for outfield sucks, outperforms and tie.
And the lowest WAR total isn’t 6.4, that’s highest. Lowest would be, if you mean projections, Dee Gordon at 1.7.
I do not think this poll means what you think it means.
Woo boy, i really misread the poll question. Apologies, all around.
I recall, quite easily, 1962 when the Mets first took the field. They lost their first 9 then went into a slump. “Can’t anybody here play this game” was Casey Stengel’s famous line. 40-120 has only been challenged once since then, by the 2003 Tigers, but one of the very interesting sidelights of this season will be whether the Marlins take a shot at that record.
My parents were in NYC in 1962.
My mother still roots for the mets on the basis that after that year, they will always be the underdogs, and that they had all the excitement of a really bad minor league team, in that even the most routine of popups had an element of interest in wondering if anyone would actually catch it, or if they’d run into each other and miss.
Did Derek think they got more ping pong balls for losing 40?
You know your outfield is bad when even after acquiring Trout, there are four teams with better outfield than you.
This’ll be a crapshoot. I voted that the higher one will be the lowest of the former MIA players, but my confidence in that pick is pretty low.
I can’t imagine that the Marlins OF will combine for less than one WAR like Steamer projects – someone out of the group of Brinson, Dietrich, Sierra, etc. will put up a 1.5-2 WAR season even if the rest blow.
This is more a reflection of how good Ozuna, Stanton, Gordon, and Yelich are.
Am I missing something here? You posted the lowest WAR totals for Stanton, Ozuna, Yelich, and Gordon. They totaled up to 6.4. Do half of the voters seriously believe that the Marlins will get 6.4 WAR from their outfield this year?
I made this same mistake.
Yes, you are. No, they don’t.
If the Marlins go with Brinson, Lee, and Sierra, they will have the speediest OF in baseball – and all with great arms.
This article really highlights what makes Sullivan so great. I came into the reading with an opinion. That opinion was quickly challenged and reconsidered. I struggled mightily to come to a decision in the end. And all of this was over the 2018 Miami Marlins. Upvote if you agree Appelman needs to pay this man enough to never leave FG.
I really hope FG comments don’t turn into ‘Upvote for X’ fuckery now that football is over.
Fun Fact:
2013 Marlins had -0.3 WAR from position players total.
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I’m kinda shocked how many people are picking the ’18 marlins. The Stanton, Yelich, Ozuna, Gordan grouping adds up to about what the mariners are projected for. Meaning that a lot people seem to think that the Marlins actually have a middle of the pact outfield instead of a really bad one.
The question is asking whether you think every single one of the Stanton, Yelich, Ozuna and Gordan group will outperform the entire Marlins OF.
DL trips and DL time are on the rise. This may be bad form, but I’ll take the option that has less event risk. Marlins OF because one knee blowout gets me my (purely hypothetical) money.