A Fun Fact Illustrative of the Marlins’ Plight
On Sunday, the Miami Marlins fired their manager, Mike Redmond, barely half a year after he received votes for the 2014 NL Manager of the Year. Coupled with the cut and forthcoming salary-eating of Jarrod Saltalamacchia and his contract, and now the, uh — promotion? demotion? — of general manager Dan Jennings to manager, it’s been a mighty volatile season in Miami. This is a lot of action before Memorial Day: what this team will do in July is anybody’s guess.
During last Friday’s game at home against the Atlanta Braves, which the Marlins would lose, the Miami broadcast team shared a fun fact that rather unwittingly illustrated the team’s lack of continuity and talent. After Giancarlo Stanton hit two home runs earlier in the game, the broadcast team reported that Stanton was the leader in home runs hit in beautiful Marlins Park, established 2012, with 59 — a number that Stanton has since increased to 60, since he is a mighty man.
All’s good so far! Where the fun fact started to unravel was when the identity of the second-most-prolific-homer-er in Marlins Park was revealed. That man is Marcell Ozuna. Which, sure, Ozuna is a promising young talent, but his total of 12 home runs hit in Marlins Park seems something like a typo and something like a piece of trivia from the Deadball Era.
What the broadcast team did not reveal, but which I very much wanted to know, was the remainder of the leaderboard for most home runs hit in Marlins Park. And, thanks to BaseballSavant, I have it.
Tied for third place, with seven homers apiece, is Garrett Jones (a Marlin in 2014), Justin Ruggiano (2012-2013), and Hanley Ramirez, who only called Marlins Park his home for the first 93 games of 2012.
Where the list gets really hairy is if we look at the three players who are tied with six homers apiece. One of them is Saltalamacchia, who is let’s say unlikely to be remembered fondly in the annals of Marlins history. The other two are Ryan Zimmerman and Evan Gattis. The presence of both of these players so high on this list is notable because — and your memory is serving you correctly here — neither of these players have ever been employed as Miami Marlins.
By playing a handful of games instead of half of their games annually at Marlins Park, Zimmerman and Gattis should, under normal circumstances, be nowhere near this close to the top of this leaderboard, especially considering that Gattis did not make his big league debut until 2013, and Zimmerman only managed five total homers in a weak 61 games in 2014. But when, of course, have the Marlins provided a set of normal circumstances?
Miles Wray contributes sports commentary to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Ploughshares, The Classical and Hardwood Paroxysm. Follow him on Twitter @mileswray or email him here.
That’s not a fun fact at all!
People keep telling me to stop riding motorcycles because they’re dangerous.
As Carson and Dave said on the most recent edition of FanGraphs Audio, the Marlins are, objectively, a huge bummer.
But he told Stanton they were going to spend money and win?
And Stanton believed him and stayed instead of going to the Cardinals.
TMW (The Marlin Way)