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Speaker 1: Here we go, the official show on the Fish Stripes podcast channel. I'm Eli Susman, the managing editor of Fish Stripes, where we cover the Miami Marlins every single day in our own way. We live for days like this, recording this on Wednesday evening, where it wasn't the trade deadline itself, but we're getting close and already one of those huge dominoes fell with the trade of Starling Martt to the Oakland A's in exchange for left hander Hayesius Lozardo, formerly one of the very best pitching prospects in all of baseball. This show is presented by symbol the stock Market for sports and deals like this. It's the perfect reminder of how every baseball move is truly interconnected and way more closely than you think. It's a beautiful thing. One of the two trades that happened today was that Marte deal, as well as Jimmy Garcia going to the Astros. If you rewind all the way back to the start of this ownership tenure of Derek Jeter, a CEO of Bruce Sherman as chairman. They took over right after the twenty seventeen season. What's the very first trade that they made it in charge of the Marlins, it was with the Yankees. It was before the Stanton trade a couple weeks before that in November twenty seventeen, sending pitching prospect Michael King in some international bonespool money to New York in exchange four. Garrett Cooper and Caleb Smith both quad a sort of players that were expendable to the Yankees. Fast forward to Wednesday and the Starling Marte deal that Marlins were able to get Marty in the first place, from Caleb Smith as being kind of that centerpiece to the move last trade deadline with Arizona. It's only two degrees of separation between the very first deal and then one of the most recent ones. The first one, and we've already seen has had a huge impact on the organization and for the most part in a positive way. The hope is that this one will do the same moving forward for the Marlins. And as they bring up Garrett Cooper right now, he's going to be a big focus of our second segment here. I know people really want to focus on the here and now and looking forward to what's going to happen on deadline day. We'll have coverage of that on Fish Stripes on our social media accounts. On fish Stripes Live, we'll have all the pertinent information, updates and then of course reaction to what happens between now and Friday at four pm. But I do feel that this is a really fascinating time to dive into the status of the Marlins first base DH position for the rest of this season and moving forward with some unfortunate news today, in mostly positive and exciting day for the Marlins, there was that unfortunate news that Garrett Cooper has undergone or he will be undergoing sea. He's an ending surgery for a slight tear in his UCL in his non throwing arm, with the hope that he could be ready for the start of spring trending next year, if not hopefully by opening day for sure. So we're going to go into that later on. We'll start off, of course, with Marte in an appreciation for Marte. I don't think it's been lost on people how great he has been with the Marlins. There were high expectations as someone who had previously been just an extremely productive and well rounded player with Pittsburgh and for his brief time in Arizona. The expectations were pretty high when they acquired him. You'd have to say that he has surpassed those expectations. He just had an awesome tenure with the Marlins, like few that we've ever seen in Marlin's history. That's kind of one of the I wanted to get to here right away that there have been very few players, so you could count them on one hand, really that have had a Marlin's tenure that was like Martes overall all things considered. I mean, for one, the brevity of it. He was acquired at the trade deadline last year, and because that whole season was shifted later than usual trade deadline last year August thirty first, and he gets traded here officially on July twenty eighth, less than one year with the Marlins organization, and he's already gone. The final stats for him, he played in ninety one regular season games as well as that one postseason game before that unfortunate injury that sidelined him for the rest of the postseason run. But he was critical to getting them into the postseason in twenty twenty in a year where they had really no good options in center field. He was a massive upgrade over who they had. He came through in the clutch from the media first time that he joined the Marlins and all the way through laid into the season, and his overall performance was even better here in twenty twenty one when healthy. Of course, he did miss time with that rib fracture. Both both before and after that injury, he was arguably the best player on the team. Ninety one games in total those two seasons. He hit two eighty seven a three seventy one on base percentage, a four to forty one slugging and that is more than twenty percent better than a league average if you're going by weight. He had runs created plus, much better than average hitter. And even better than that was his base running is stealing twenty seven out of thirty bases, a ninety percent stolen base success rate at an incredible volume. He did it while I think the biggest surprise to me was how well he played center field. You just look it up, and it's unusual for any guys in their thirties to still be playing center field, much less being a real asset out there defensively, and that's exactly what he was, especially here in twenty twenty one. So for all this concern from some people, not a lot, but from some people that you know, if you're giving him a future contract beyond this year, that it'll be as a corner outfielder. There's really nothing from what we saw in twenty twenty one that feeds into that other than just looking at comparable players. Like what we saw with our own eyes. This year was really outstanding by defensive front saved by outs above average, whatever metric you use, and just by seeing the routes that he takes and the athleticism that he has, the variety of plays that he makes with ease, that was super impressive. You bundle it all together and those two seasons, but again not two full seasons, it adds up to only ninety one games, and he contributed three and a half wins above replacement by Baseball Reference, slightly more than that by Fangrafts. You extrapolate that over like one hundred and sixty two games, and that's a superstar. That is an MVP candidate almost. That's how terrific he was in the time that he was available to the Marlins, and they got him. As I said, for Caleb Smith, when Smith's stock was way down, he had coming off of his COVID positive test for Umberto Mahia, who was kind of like a fringy back end starter but more likely middle reliever type, and then a real lottery ticket deeper in the farm system, Julio Freeos. They were able to get Marte for the rest of this year, that reasonable team option for this year, and they picked it up. I mentioned his win's above replacement about three and a half, and I really I find him on this this tier of about five guys position players in Marlin's history who at very short tenures either one season, one full calendar year or less, and performed at that kind of level. And once you get on top of that list, the really best example of a one year guy, a hitter for the Marlins that really carried the team, it would have to be Pad Rodriguez in two thousand and three. Going by Baseball Reference war four and a half win's above replacement during that three season, and that's just the regular season. He was terrific also in the postseason and he was like they're all he was an iron man during that postseason run as well. Right below him, moyses Alou at three point five wins above replacement, he was an RBI machine during that nineteen ninety seven season. So you see what those guys maybe put them in their own tier because they were involved on those World Series teams. But I mean Marte statistically, he is right there with Moyses Alu, and he did it at that up the middle position, whereas Alu was mostly that corner guy, and Marte the performance is right there, and he did it in so much fewer games due to the shortened schedule due to his injury. The two names right below him in terms of wins above replacement as Marlin for these short ten years. You get Jose Reyis in twenty twelve and you got Carlos Delgado in two thousand and five. That's kind of the company he keeps. When we think of Marte's tenure with the Marlins, I think it should be very much like we view those other guys, Pudge, Moises Alu, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado. And maybe you want to take Rays out of that because he obviously wasn't involved with any team that had any sort of contending moment for it. I mean, things went south pretty early in that twenty twelve season. I think it's really Marte, Delgado, Alu and Pudge kind of in a tier of their own. However you want to break that up. You know, I'm struggling to exactly draw the line there. I think that just Hammer's hon how unique this has been to you haven't performed so well, and to do it at an up the middle position at a time when the Marlins just did not have any good alternatives at that position. It was such a huge boost. And of course that's what you have to be extremely satisfied with how the front office handled it. That being said, in the immediate aftermath of this deal, the popular opinion is that the Marlins got excellent value for Marte at this point. So at this point, you know, he has turned down those contract extensions. The Marlins made multiple offers. We've had this long conversation about how those offers were not good enough. They did technically make offers, though, and they trade him to an Oakland team that has the same sort of you know, spending anxiety that the Marlins have. So they are acquiring him in Oakland knowing full well that he is a rental. They are not going to be able to extend him during the season, and they are highly highly doubtful to be able to win any sort of bidding war once he reaches free agency as the top centerfielder on the market, perhaps a top outfielder on the market overall. For two months just knowing him as rental at a time war, They're not even guaranteed to make the playoffs in Oakland. It might just only be for two months, not necessarily three, including October. They gave up Hayesius Lozardo, who is very recently removed from being in elite pitching prospect really on that sea level that six Do Sanchez was when six oh was acquired by the Marlins. Hayesus is a little bit older. He's had more, He's had similar sort of injury concerns throughout his career. He actually has had a more significant injury i'd say, already in his career to his shoulder than six To has had at any other point. But the v low, especially for a left handed pitcher, that be low is pretty great. He's got a lot of potential with his changeup and with his breaking ball when you dive into it. His performance in the minor leagues at the lower levels was excellent. He's having a pretty rough year here in twenty twenty one. We're not going to go into sorrow right now, other than to point out that the Marlins, by trading away Marte so close to the end of his deal and by taking responsibility for all the money at the end of it, they were able to get this great return. And I've seen a lot of people applauding the Marlins for eating that money, which was about four and a half million dollars that he was still owed for the rest of this year, in order to buy a better prospect out of it Lizardo, not technically a prospect, but you know what I mean, to buy a better younger player than they would have otherwise, because they were able to do that. Again, I just think the full context here is important. That if you're giving the Marlins an A and A plus for this trade, I just don't think that's the important thing. Too great, I don't think that's really what matters. What matters it's really the entire process. So I won't go all the way back to the King and the Cooper and the Caleb trade from the first trade in twenty seventeen, But if you don't go back to when the Marlins acquired Marte from there, you know less than a year how that played out. It was a great process to acquire him. His production was pretty great. He showed himself to be a pretty invaluable member of the team, and he even showed an eagerness to stay with the Marlins beyond his current deal that they had this opportunity to extend him, if we are going by the trustee reports of Craig miss Marlins insider saying that they had contract extension negotiations during late June and into mid July, eventually breaking up those conversations at the All Star break when they were still too far apart and couldn't find any common ground. So they had this opportunity to extend him, and I think that's when you'd be fully fully satisfied with what the Marlins pulled off here, if they were able to get this production and then you know, lock him up through the remainder of his prime years at a time where by all measures, he's performing as well right now as he has at pretty much any other point of his career. Instead, they have this temporary void in center field. There's optimism, there's some buzz that they will find another guy to address this position in the very near term, perhaps before the deadline. But I don't think he get pat Marlins on the back for stepping up and paying the rest of Martes's deal to make this trade pull off. When they showed that they did not have the financial wherewithal to extend a player that had a lot of mutual interest in being extended, they passed up on this opportunity. What they did here is they salvaged the situation. This is one of the only ways that they could have done this. They've done almost the best possible job of salvaging the situation. That's where you see people giving this an A or an A plus for what they did here, because they really this is an excellent way to salvage the situation by bringing home a local player in jesusil Zardo, who has immense upside, who is not far removed from producing at the major league level, and who still has some of those skills intact that make you believe that that ceiling is still attainable. But again, that does not take away from what the Marlins screwed up here. They did not step up and make that offer to Marte and potentially because they have an concerns about the profitability of the franchise that they felt they couldn't commit what fifteen million dollars a year for the next three or four years to a great player. So that is still there, Like, that's still a misstep. And even no matter how excited we are about who potentially they could trade for as a controllable center fielder, the odds are stacked against that controllable centerfielder being as good as Martees. That's what I really want to hammer home here is how high a bar Martes set, how difficulty is to replace. Ethan Bodowski on Fish Strips has an article about this trade with some thoughts about that that I encourage you to read. It'll be much harder to replace Marte than I think anybody imagines they might not be able to replace Marte. And so although I do applaud them for making this move, and there are certainly some encouraging signs about how they're able to land this particular deal and land from a team that I don't think anybody had on the radars and Marte contender, So a team that was pursuing Marte in the Oakland A's yeah, credit for all of that but when you look at this entire situation as a whole, certainly this is not the ideal outcome to be starling Marte lists at this stage going into we're now deep into year four of this rebuild of this new era, and not knowing at this point who is going to be up the middle for you in center field in year five. This podcast as always presented by our partners at Symbol the stock market for sports. Symbol allows you to trade sports teams like stocks and earn cash payouts when your teams win. Use your knowledge and the site's free daily market analysis to buy low, sell high on MLB, NFL, NBA, and now college football teams as well. On Symbol Symbol. That's where more than twenty five hundred early adopters have already started to invest. Www dot simbull dot app to create your free account. When you deposit at symbol dot app, make sure to use the promo code fish stripes all one word fish stripes to get started, and you get a ten dollars deposit bonus with that promo code. The current sim Marlins share price twenty eight dollars and fifty two cents. Visit Symbol dot app promo code fish stripes to claim that ten dollars deposit bonus to help build your portfolio, invest in what you know, invest in sports. As promised, we circle back to the original Jeter trade that included acquiring Garrett Cooper from the Yankees. He's in the news today, like the only bad piece of news that we got is that he is out for the entire season after that collision at first base. It resulted in an elbow sprain severe enough that they have they've opted to have it addressed. There was a couple other options. He could have tried to do a more traditional rehab route instead of undergoing surgery, but that was not guaranteed to get him back during the season anyway. He is recovery time estimated to be about five months, so we might not know until the new year, until spring training gets relatively close whether or not he'll actually be available for the very start of it, which begs the question about what this position looks like for the Marlins next year, and that's both first base and DH. We are going to be optimistic and assume that Major League Baseball and the Players Association they come to their senses, they get a DH, a universal DH as part of the new collective bargaining agreement, and the Marlins have I guess you could say three guys for two spots. It's a little bit more nuanced than that. They have Garrett Cooper, they have Hasius Aguilar, and they've laid we're going to talk about all of them. So with Cooper, his season is over. He had a two eighty four three point eighty four sixty five slash line awfully similarly similar to what he had in twenty twenty when we were calling him the best hitter on the Marlins. He was arguably the best hitter on the Marlins this year, nine home runs in less than half a season due to the time that he also missed with a previous injury. A one thirty six w RC plus Remember league average is one hundred thirty six percent better than league average when you just for the playing conditions, very similar to what he did in twenty twenty. It's hard to argue that he is a great hitter, that he is probably the most talented hitter on the Marlins major league roster. I don't know if you'd point to anybody in their minor league system that has more like ability than he does, that's simply hitting the ball.
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Speaker 2: Pay off pitch coming.
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Speaker 1: It's a deep set up.
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Speaker 2: Here, winner, Coop, you found a stroke, a big home run in last night's ball game, tied it up tonight, the walk off winner.
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Speaker 1: And that's not the end all beal to everything with Cooper. What we saw this year is we saw some bad outfield defense. He was forced to play a lot of outfield this year because of the lack of DH because of Hazus Aguilar kind of being that steady force at first base, that he was out of position, and he really struggled in right field, even though this this injury, this ultimate elbow injury, actually happened when he was playing first base, But I digress. And then as a base runner, he's he's pretty slow. You might say he's the most athletic guy of this group. I don't know, it's that's not much of a distinction. That's not saying much. The bar is very low, but for him, he is despite that, he is extremely slow, and he's liability on the basis so when he's not hitting it for extra bases, you that's something that kind of limits his impact on the game. He is earning in his first year of arbitration eligibility one point eight million dollars due to this shortened season. My rough estimate is that next year in arbitration he'll certainly earn a raise, but not a huge one, maybe something in the two and a half to three million dollar range. It could get into the low threes. I don't think it will quite double, though. It will be a very manageable total, even for a guy that you're not sure is a full time player. Next we go to Aguilar. I'm recording this as the Marlins are finishing up their game against the Orioles. I'm assuming this is going to be his final total seventy five runs batted in, which is the most in the National League. He's been right up there among the National League leaders for most of the year. And as I'm recording this, the game has just ended a walk off walk for the Baltimore Orioles as the Marlins split the series in Baltimore. And so that's going to complete what the Marlins are looking like heading into the trade deadline. They're going to be forty four and fifty eight. Back to the show with Aguilar ninety He's played in almost every single game this year, he's been durable, and he's been so productive, especially on the road. For whatever reason, he's been incredible on the road. He's been all right at home, and he is a little bit further along in his service time than Cooper is. He's six months younger, but he has been in the big leagues longer, and he's been more productive because he's been more durable. He's earning over four million dollars this year and next season due to if he keeps us up, if he continues playing on a pretty regular basis down the stretch, and he has these big counting stats, I think he's gonna get up over eight million dollars for him this upcoming year. He's gonna be, all things considered, a fine value for a lot of teams. But I don't need to remind you that the Marlins are very stingy with this kind of stuff, and all indications. I wouldn't say all indications if I was the guest right now. The sense is that Agile will be traded at the deadline, that the Marlins aren't getting quite what they want in negotiations, and just quoting Craig Mish, he reported on Wednesday morning, has Segelar wants to stay and Miami has interest in extending him through twenty twenty three, so that'd be a two year contract extension. There predictably has been a lot of interest in him, miss says, and another tough decision coming there, so not a done deal that he's gonna make it through the deadline. I'm frankly kind of shocked that this we're even in this position where they've discussed an extension and where a trade of him is very unclear to happen. Because of that, Big rays that he is due something again north of probably eight million dollars due to the kind of numbers that he is putting up this season for someone that is landlocked at first base. You know, he's an emergency third baseman. We've seen that in action at least once this year, if not twice, of him sliding over to that other corner. Things get really funky in the later endings of a certain game. But for the most part, he's a first base only guy, and he's not a particularly good defensive first baseman. I mean, if you're being really generous, you could say he's approximately average, but I wouldn't really agree with that, just because of his limited range and his glove work is kind of hit or miss. He's he's serviceable out there, and I think he's worth the money in the vacuum to a lot of teams, and even for the Marlins under certain circumstances because of that, and because the intangible stuff as well. He is he is adored by fans and I imagined by most of his teammates for pretty obvious reasons. He is a fun guy that really appreciates the position that he is in. I guess the idea of an extension is that they would lock him in at a price that is lower than the arbitration number. That must be the plan that the Marlins recognize that they don't want to be paying that number for him moving forward, and the one to give him a ray over what he's earning this year, which is four point thirty five million, but probably not a dramatic one, and they'll one to lock him in for the next two years at a slightly higher rate, but one that doesn't super inconvenience them. Again, the problem is that he is stuck at first base, and for the most part, Laywan Diaz is stuck at first base. He has played that position all throughout his minor league career. He has reportedly done some workouts in the corner outfield spots last year during summer camp that didn't really stick. He didn't play that at all when he was called up to the majors last year. And as of this recording, he's still on their major league roster right now because they were playing those games in the American League Park against the Orioles with the DH. But as soon as they head home this weekend, they don't have that DH anymore, and I'll be curious to see whether Leywan even sticks on the roster or whether they send him down laymen. In fifty eight games this year between Triple A and the Majors, he is homeward seventeen times. He has almost as many home runs as Aguilar in barely half as many games. It's not apples to apples comparison, of course, the conditions between Triple A and the Majors. The key with him is his defense. For one. In fact, a critical play here on Wednesday's loss is a double play that he almost turned, and uncharacteristically Brian Anderson kind of misplayed that, But Leywan almost turned a three to five double play that would have preserved the lead in the eighth inning, and that went awry through really no fault of Leywan's. Unfortunately, those are the kind of plays that he makes that Aguilar certainly doesn't even attempt. I think he's great defensively. I don't think he could ask much more that he's gonna probably win you at least one game every year with his glove if he's playing that every single game. And I mean the more important factor, of course, is the dollars and cents his controllability because he spent most of this year in the minor leagues, and he was spent most of last year at summer camp. His club control is still way down. He has not accrued yet one year of major league service time, and he won't even if he does stay up for the rest of this year, which means he'll be controllable for six more years. Beyond twenty twenty one, he'll be around forever. It's going to be at least a couple more years until he's even eligible for arbitration. So that alone, when you're talking about Aguilar. Even if Aguila does an extension, someone that will make somewhere north of five billion dollars with Cooper someone that will probably be approaching three million, if not above that, then you have Dias at like six hundred thousands. That's that's something that you absolutely have to take into consideration. And of course the fact that he is younger, that he is only twenty four years old. Aguilar is thirty, Cooper's thirty. So yeah, these three guys, first base is the primary position for all of them. First base is really the only position for two of them. It's contradictory from what the Marlins have said at many times during this rebuild about building an athletic in a versatile team. That this spits in the face of that. None of these guys are athletic or fast or really that versatile. And I don't see any snaring where they co exist on the roster next year. And I'm curious whether they co exist in the organization through this trade deadline, just because I mean, it's about time that Diaz gets tested at the major league level. There have been whispers from Marlin's executives that they feel Leywan is one of the very best prospects in their organization. I'm someone that I do think he has a strong causibility of being a full time caliber first baseman. He's probably not going to be the same type of heater, pure hit tool guy that Aguilar is. The trajectory of his swing it does bother me at times. It leads to a lot of those home runs, but also a lot of kind of innocuous flyouts as well. His launch angle gets too steep a lot of the times, and especially when you're playing a lot of home games at Loan Depot Park, you're not going to get rewarded for those. So is there a way that he could co exist with either Agalar or Cooper? Yeah, I mean, for one, the opposite handedness that Laywan swings from the left side in the who swing from the right side. So if there's any sort of scenario where I guess this would be kind of a worst case scenario where you don't feel that any of them are everyday players, you could have some sort of platoon situation, some sort of like rotation between them. Again, this is all assuming there's even a DH next year. I just it's not so much about it's a lot about the money, but it's even more so just about the roster spots being so precious that I just don't see a way where you're gonna have three of your twenty six active roster spots to first baseman next season in twenty twenty two. I'm just curious to hear what do you guys think about how the Marlins should resolve this? Again, we have Aguilar as really the most dependable of these guys now in back to back seasons, he's been such a great hitter, such a great clutch hitter, and for everything he does off the field with Cooper, he probably is like the biggest upside as a hitter alone. I mean, we've seen it in the last two years, but he just can't stay healthy. At this point, let me pull up quickly this number on gar Cooper that the Marlins what these last three years, these last four years he's been the organization now for four years at Cooper, in his four years in the Marlins organization, will have played in about forty percent of the possible games due to a variety of injuries, some of them really some fluky ones in there for sure, but ultimately it's the cliche that the best ability is availability, and he has just not had that at all with him. So I expect them to tender him a contract. The question is going to come down to whether they keep Aguilar through this deadline. I mean, they've been talking so highly about Leywin, and we just know the way that this position ages that despite how good Aguilar looks at age thirty, well now thirty one, he just celebrated his birthday and Cooper looks at age thirty, that these guys can fall off a cliff really quick. And the Marlins can't afford knowing that they already have enough offensive questions as they already have, and after map of trading away Starling Marte, they need to be very careful with who they invest in, with who they give these roster spots to. We could see a lot of clarity with this situation at the trade deadline again, even open that possibility that Agilar could get del he does have positive value and with Laywan kind of being redundant to him, even with the DH coming along, these next couple days will be very fascinating and assuming that they do hold on to Agilar, how exactly they split up that playing time between him and Laywin. Coming down the stretch in what is ultimately going to be a non contending heear that's one of the big storylines to follow during these final sixty games. Of course, the most pressing issue is the trade deadline involving Agilar evolving all the Marlins relievers. Maybe there are some dark horse candidates who get traded as well. Adam Duvall all that well, have you covered on fift stripes. Thank you guys for listening. I've been Elis Susman will have plenty more content coming up for you. Small pod along on the same feed Thursday morning. Friday morning. We'll have our live stream on Friday afternoon. Perfect timing that it'll be right after the trade deadline, but right before this much anticipated series against Jean Carlos Stanton in the Yankees. Good decisions or bad decisions or wait to see decisions. This is an interesting organization for sure. As always, appreciate you listening and go Fish
Speaker 1: Here we go, the official show on the Fish Stripes podcast channel. I'm Eli Susman, the managing editor of Fish Stripes, where we cover the Miami Marlins every single day in our own way. We live for days like this, recording this on Wednesday evening, where it wasn't the trade deadline itself, but we're getting close and already one of those huge dominoes fell with the trade of Starling Martt to the Oakland A's in exchange for left hander Hayesius Lozardo, formerly one of the very best pitching prospects in all of baseball. This show is presented by symbol the stock Market for sports and deals like this. It's the perfect reminder of how every baseball move is truly interconnected and way more closely than you think. It's a beautiful thing. One of the two trades that happened today was that Marte deal, as well as Jimmy Garcia going to the Astros. If you rewind all the way back to the start of this ownership tenure of Derek Jeter, a CEO of Bruce Sherman as chairman. They took over right after the twenty seventeen season. What's the very first trade that they made it in charge of the Marlins, it was with the Yankees. It was before the Stanton trade a couple weeks before that in November twenty seventeen, sending pitching prospect Michael King in some international bonespool money to New York in exchange four. Garrett Cooper and Caleb Smith both quad a sort of players that were expendable to the Yankees. Fast forward to Wednesday and the Starling Marte deal that Marlins were able to get Marty in the first place, from Caleb Smith as being kind of that centerpiece to the move last trade deadline with Arizona. It's only two degrees of separation between the very first deal and then one of the most recent ones. The first one, and we've already seen has had a huge impact on the organization and for the most part in a positive way. The hope is that this one will do the same moving forward for the Marlins. And as they bring up Garrett Cooper right now, he's going to be a big focus of our second segment here. I know people really want to focus on the here and now and looking forward to what's going to happen on deadline day. We'll have coverage of that on Fish Stripes on our social media accounts. On fish Stripes Live, we'll have all the pertinent information, updates and then of course reaction to what happens between now and Friday at four pm. But I do feel that this is a really fascinating time to dive into the status of the Marlins first base DH position for the rest of this season and moving forward with some unfortunate news today, in mostly positive and exciting day for the Marlins, there was that unfortunate news that Garrett Cooper has undergone or he will be undergoing sea. He's an ending surgery for a slight tear in his UCL in his non throwing arm, with the hope that he could be ready for the start of spring trending next year, if not hopefully by opening day for sure. So we're going to go into that later on. We'll start off, of course, with Marte in an appreciation for Marte. I don't think it's been lost on people how great he has been with the Marlins. There were high expectations as someone who had previously been just an extremely productive and well rounded player with Pittsburgh and for his brief time in Arizona. The expectations were pretty high when they acquired him. You'd have to say that he has surpassed those expectations. He just had an awesome tenure with the Marlins, like few that we've ever seen in Marlin's history. That's kind of one of the I wanted to get to here right away that there have been very few players, so you could count them on one hand, really that have had a Marlin's tenure that was like Martes overall all things considered. I mean, for one, the brevity of it. He was acquired at the trade deadline last year, and because that whole season was shifted later than usual trade deadline last year August thirty first, and he gets traded here officially on July twenty eighth, less than one year with the Marlins organization, and he's already gone. The final stats for him, he played in ninety one regular season games as well as that one postseason game before that unfortunate injury that sidelined him for the rest of the postseason run. But he was critical to getting them into the postseason in twenty twenty in a year where they had really no good options in center field. He was a massive upgrade over who they had. He came through in the clutch from the media first time that he joined the Marlins and all the way through laid into the season, and his overall performance was even better here in twenty twenty one when healthy. Of course, he did miss time with that rib fracture. Both both before and after that injury, he was arguably the best player on the team. Ninety one games in total those two seasons. He hit two eighty seven a three seventy one on base percentage, a four to forty one slugging and that is more than twenty percent better than a league average if you're going by weight. He had runs created plus, much better than average hitter. And even better than that was his base running is stealing twenty seven out of thirty bases, a ninety percent stolen base success rate at an incredible volume. He did it while I think the biggest surprise to me was how well he played center field. You just look it up, and it's unusual for any guys in their thirties to still be playing center field, much less being a real asset out there defensively, and that's exactly what he was, especially here in twenty twenty one. So for all this concern from some people, not a lot, but from some people that you know, if you're giving him a future contract beyond this year, that it'll be as a corner outfielder. There's really nothing from what we saw in twenty twenty one that feeds into that other than just looking at comparable players. Like what we saw with our own eyes. This year was really outstanding by defensive front saved by outs above average, whatever metric you use, and just by seeing the routes that he takes and the athleticism that he has, the variety of plays that he makes with ease, that was super impressive. You bundle it all together and those two seasons, but again not two full seasons, it adds up to only ninety one games, and he contributed three and a half wins above replacement by Baseball Reference, slightly more than that by Fangrafts. You extrapolate that over like one hundred and sixty two games, and that's a superstar. That is an MVP candidate almost. That's how terrific he was in the time that he was available to the Marlins, and they got him. As I said, for Caleb Smith, when Smith's stock was way down, he had coming off of his COVID positive test for Umberto Mahia, who was kind of like a fringy back end starter but more likely middle reliever type, and then a real lottery ticket deeper in the farm system, Julio Freeos. They were able to get Marte for the rest of this year, that reasonable team option for this year, and they picked it up. I mentioned his win's above replacement about three and a half, and I really I find him on this this tier of about five guys position players in Marlin's history who at very short tenures either one season, one full calendar year or less, and performed at that kind of level. And once you get on top of that list, the really best example of a one year guy, a hitter for the Marlins that really carried the team, it would have to be Pad Rodriguez in two thousand and three. Going by Baseball Reference war four and a half win's above replacement during that three season, and that's just the regular season. He was terrific also in the postseason and he was like they're all he was an iron man during that postseason run as well. Right below him, moyses Alou at three point five wins above replacement, he was an RBI machine during that nineteen ninety seven season. So you see what those guys maybe put them in their own tier because they were involved on those World Series teams. But I mean Marte statistically, he is right there with Moyses Alu, and he did it at that up the middle position, whereas Alu was mostly that corner guy, and Marte the performance is right there, and he did it in so much fewer games due to the shortened schedule due to his injury. The two names right below him in terms of wins above replacement as Marlin for these short ten years. You get Jose Reyis in twenty twelve and you got Carlos Delgado in two thousand and five. That's kind of the company he keeps. When we think of Marte's tenure with the Marlins, I think it should be very much like we view those other guys, Pudge, Moises Alu, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado. And maybe you want to take Rays out of that because he obviously wasn't involved with any team that had any sort of contending moment for it. I mean, things went south pretty early in that twenty twelve season. I think it's really Marte, Delgado, Alu and Pudge kind of in a tier of their own. However you want to break that up. You know, I'm struggling to exactly draw the line there. I think that just Hammer's hon how unique this has been to you haven't performed so well, and to do it at an up the middle position at a time when the Marlins just did not have any good alternatives at that position. It was such a huge boost. And of course that's what you have to be extremely satisfied with how the front office handled it. That being said, in the immediate aftermath of this deal, the popular opinion is that the Marlins got excellent value for Marte at this point. So at this point, you know, he has turned down those contract extensions. The Marlins made multiple offers. We've had this long conversation about how those offers were not good enough. They did technically make offers, though, and they trade him to an Oakland team that has the same sort of you know, spending anxiety that the Marlins have. So they are acquiring him in Oakland knowing full well that he is a rental. They are not going to be able to extend him during the season, and they are highly highly doubtful to be able to win any sort of bidding war once he reaches free agency as the top centerfielder on the market, perhaps a top outfielder on the market overall. For two months just knowing him as rental at a time war, They're not even guaranteed to make the playoffs in Oakland. It might just only be for two months, not necessarily three, including October. They gave up Hayesius Lozardo, who is very recently removed from being in elite pitching prospect really on that sea level that six Do Sanchez was when six oh was acquired by the Marlins. Hayesus is a little bit older. He's had more, He's had similar sort of injury concerns throughout his career. He actually has had a more significant injury i'd say, already in his career to his shoulder than six To has had at any other point. But the v low, especially for a left handed pitcher, that be low is pretty great. He's got a lot of potential with his changeup and with his breaking ball when you dive into it. His performance in the minor leagues at the lower levels was excellent. He's having a pretty rough year here in twenty twenty one. We're not going to go into sorrow right now, other than to point out that the Marlins, by trading away Marte so close to the end of his deal and by taking responsibility for all the money at the end of it, they were able to get this great return. And I've seen a lot of people applauding the Marlins for eating that money, which was about four and a half million dollars that he was still owed for the rest of this year, in order to buy a better prospect out of it Lizardo, not technically a prospect, but you know what I mean, to buy a better younger player than they would have otherwise, because they were able to do that. Again, I just think the full context here is important. That if you're giving the Marlins an A and A plus for this trade, I just don't think that's the important thing. Too great, I don't think that's really what matters. What matters it's really the entire process. So I won't go all the way back to the King and the Cooper and the Caleb trade from the first trade in twenty seventeen, But if you don't go back to when the Marlins acquired Marte from there, you know less than a year how that played out. It was a great process to acquire him. His production was pretty great. He showed himself to be a pretty invaluable member of the team, and he even showed an eagerness to stay with the Marlins beyond his current deal that they had this opportunity to extend him, if we are going by the trustee reports of Craig miss Marlins insider saying that they had contract extension negotiations during late June and into mid July, eventually breaking up those conversations at the All Star break when they were still too far apart and couldn't find any common ground. So they had this opportunity to extend him, and I think that's when you'd be fully fully satisfied with what the Marlins pulled off here, if they were able to get this production and then you know, lock him up through the remainder of his prime years at a time where by all measures, he's performing as well right now as he has at pretty much any other point of his career. Instead, they have this temporary void in center field. There's optimism, there's some buzz that they will find another guy to address this position in the very near term, perhaps before the deadline. But I don't think he get pat Marlins on the back for stepping up and paying the rest of Martes's deal to make this trade pull off. When they showed that they did not have the financial wherewithal to extend a player that had a lot of mutual interest in being extended, they passed up on this opportunity. What they did here is they salvaged the situation. This is one of the only ways that they could have done this. They've done almost the best possible job of salvaging the situation. That's where you see people giving this an A or an A plus for what they did here, because they really this is an excellent way to salvage the situation by bringing home a local player in jesusil Zardo, who has immense upside, who is not far removed from producing at the major league level, and who still has some of those skills intact that make you believe that that ceiling is still attainable. But again, that does not take away from what the Marlins screwed up here. They did not step up and make that offer to Marte and potentially because they have an concerns about the profitability of the franchise that they felt they couldn't commit what fifteen million dollars a year for the next three or four years to a great player. So that is still there, Like, that's still a misstep. And even no matter how excited we are about who potentially they could trade for as a controllable center fielder, the odds are stacked against that controllable centerfielder being as good as Martees. That's what I really want to hammer home here is how high a bar Martes set, how difficulty is to replace. Ethan Bodowski on Fish Strips has an article about this trade with some thoughts about that that I encourage you to read. It'll be much harder to replace Marte than I think anybody imagines they might not be able to replace Marte. And so although I do applaud them for making this move, and there are certainly some encouraging signs about how they're able to land this particular deal and land from a team that I don't think anybody had on the radars and Marte contender, So a team that was pursuing Marte in the Oakland A's yeah, credit for all of that but when you look at this entire situation as a whole, certainly this is not the ideal outcome to be starling Marte lists at this stage going into we're now deep into year four of this rebuild of this new era, and not knowing at this point who is going to be up the middle for you in center field in year five. This podcast as always presented by our partners at Symbol the stock market for sports. Symbol allows you to trade sports teams like stocks and earn cash payouts when your teams win. Use your knowledge and the site's free daily market analysis to buy low, sell high on MLB, NFL, NBA, and now college football teams as well. On Symbol Symbol. That's where more than twenty five hundred early adopters have already started to invest. Www dot simbull dot app to create your free account. When you deposit at symbol dot app, make sure to use the promo code fish stripes all one word fish stripes to get started, and you get a ten dollars deposit bonus with that promo code. The current sim Marlins share price twenty eight dollars and fifty two cents. Visit Symbol dot app promo code fish stripes to claim that ten dollars deposit bonus to help build your portfolio, invest in what you know, invest in sports. As promised, we circle back to the original Jeter trade that included acquiring Garrett Cooper from the Yankees. He's in the news today, like the only bad piece of news that we got is that he is out for the entire season after that collision at first base. It resulted in an elbow sprain severe enough that they have they've opted to have it addressed. There was a couple other options. He could have tried to do a more traditional rehab route instead of undergoing surgery, but that was not guaranteed to get him back during the season anyway. He is recovery time estimated to be about five months, so we might not know until the new year, until spring training gets relatively close whether or not he'll actually be available for the very start of it, which begs the question about what this position looks like for the Marlins next year, and that's both first base and DH. We are going to be optimistic and assume that Major League Baseball and the Players Association they come to their senses, they get a DH, a universal DH as part of the new collective bargaining agreement, and the Marlins have I guess you could say three guys for two spots. It's a little bit more nuanced than that. They have Garrett Cooper, they have Hasius Aguilar, and they've laid we're going to talk about all of them. So with Cooper, his season is over. He had a two eighty four three point eighty four sixty five slash line awfully similarly similar to what he had in twenty twenty when we were calling him the best hitter on the Marlins. He was arguably the best hitter on the Marlins this year, nine home runs in less than half a season due to the time that he also missed with a previous injury. A one thirty six w RC plus Remember league average is one hundred thirty six percent better than league average when you just for the playing conditions, very similar to what he did in twenty twenty. It's hard to argue that he is a great hitter, that he is probably the most talented hitter on the Marlins major league roster. I don't know if you'd point to anybody in their minor league system that has more like ability than he does, that's simply hitting the ball.
00:19:49
Speaker 2: Pay off pitch coming.
00:19:51
Speaker 1: It's a deep set up.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: Here, winner, Coop, you found a stroke, a big home run in last night's ball game, tied it up tonight, the walk off winner.
00:20:15
Speaker 1: And that's not the end all beal to everything with Cooper. What we saw this year is we saw some bad outfield defense. He was forced to play a lot of outfield this year because of the lack of DH because of Hazus Aguilar kind of being that steady force at first base, that he was out of position, and he really struggled in right field, even though this this injury, this ultimate elbow injury, actually happened when he was playing first base, But I digress. And then as a base runner, he's he's pretty slow. You might say he's the most athletic guy of this group. I don't know, it's that's not much of a distinction. That's not saying much. The bar is very low, but for him, he is despite that, he is extremely slow, and he's liability on the basis so when he's not hitting it for extra bases, you that's something that kind of limits his impact on the game. He is earning in his first year of arbitration eligibility one point eight million dollars due to this shortened season. My rough estimate is that next year in arbitration he'll certainly earn a raise, but not a huge one, maybe something in the two and a half to three million dollar range. It could get into the low threes. I don't think it will quite double, though. It will be a very manageable total, even for a guy that you're not sure is a full time player. Next we go to Aguilar. I'm recording this as the Marlins are finishing up their game against the Orioles. I'm assuming this is going to be his final total seventy five runs batted in, which is the most in the National League. He's been right up there among the National League leaders for most of the year. And as I'm recording this, the game has just ended a walk off walk for the Baltimore Orioles as the Marlins split the series in Baltimore. And so that's going to complete what the Marlins are looking like heading into the trade deadline. They're going to be forty four and fifty eight. Back to the show with Aguilar ninety He's played in almost every single game this year, he's been durable, and he's been so productive, especially on the road. For whatever reason, he's been incredible on the road. He's been all right at home, and he is a little bit further along in his service time than Cooper is. He's six months younger, but he has been in the big leagues longer, and he's been more productive because he's been more durable. He's earning over four million dollars this year and next season due to if he keeps us up, if he continues playing on a pretty regular basis down the stretch, and he has these big counting stats, I think he's gonna get up over eight million dollars for him this upcoming year. He's gonna be, all things considered, a fine value for a lot of teams. But I don't need to remind you that the Marlins are very stingy with this kind of stuff, and all indications. I wouldn't say all indications if I was the guest right now. The sense is that Agile will be traded at the deadline, that the Marlins aren't getting quite what they want in negotiations, and just quoting Craig Mish, he reported on Wednesday morning, has Segelar wants to stay and Miami has interest in extending him through twenty twenty three, so that'd be a two year contract extension. There predictably has been a lot of interest in him, miss says, and another tough decision coming there, so not a done deal that he's gonna make it through the deadline. I'm frankly kind of shocked that this we're even in this position where they've discussed an extension and where a trade of him is very unclear to happen. Because of that, Big rays that he is due something again north of probably eight million dollars due to the kind of numbers that he is putting up this season for someone that is landlocked at first base. You know, he's an emergency third baseman. We've seen that in action at least once this year, if not twice, of him sliding over to that other corner. Things get really funky in the later endings of a certain game. But for the most part, he's a first base only guy, and he's not a particularly good defensive first baseman. I mean, if you're being really generous, you could say he's approximately average, but I wouldn't really agree with that, just because of his limited range and his glove work is kind of hit or miss. He's he's serviceable out there, and I think he's worth the money in the vacuum to a lot of teams, and even for the Marlins under certain circumstances because of that, and because the intangible stuff as well. He is he is adored by fans and I imagined by most of his teammates for pretty obvious reasons. He is a fun guy that really appreciates the position that he is in. I guess the idea of an extension is that they would lock him in at a price that is lower than the arbitration number. That must be the plan that the Marlins recognize that they don't want to be paying that number for him moving forward, and the one to give him a ray over what he's earning this year, which is four point thirty five million, but probably not a dramatic one, and they'll one to lock him in for the next two years at a slightly higher rate, but one that doesn't super inconvenience them. Again, the problem is that he is stuck at first base, and for the most part, Laywan Diaz is stuck at first base. He has played that position all throughout his minor league career. He has reportedly done some workouts in the corner outfield spots last year during summer camp that didn't really stick. He didn't play that at all when he was called up to the majors last year. And as of this recording, he's still on their major league roster right now because they were playing those games in the American League Park against the Orioles with the DH. But as soon as they head home this weekend, they don't have that DH anymore, and I'll be curious to see whether Leywan even sticks on the roster or whether they send him down laymen. In fifty eight games this year between Triple A and the Majors, he is homeward seventeen times. He has almost as many home runs as Aguilar in barely half as many games. It's not apples to apples comparison, of course, the conditions between Triple A and the Majors. The key with him is his defense. For one. In fact, a critical play here on Wednesday's loss is a double play that he almost turned, and uncharacteristically Brian Anderson kind of misplayed that, But Leywan almost turned a three to five double play that would have preserved the lead in the eighth inning, and that went awry through really no fault of Leywan's. Unfortunately, those are the kind of plays that he makes that Aguilar certainly doesn't even attempt. I think he's great defensively. I don't think he could ask much more that he's gonna probably win you at least one game every year with his glove if he's playing that every single game. And I mean the more important factor, of course, is the dollars and cents his controllability because he spent most of this year in the minor leagues, and he was spent most of last year at summer camp. His club control is still way down. He has not accrued yet one year of major league service time, and he won't even if he does stay up for the rest of this year, which means he'll be controllable for six more years. Beyond twenty twenty one, he'll be around forever. It's going to be at least a couple more years until he's even eligible for arbitration. So that alone, when you're talking about Aguilar. Even if Aguila does an extension, someone that will make somewhere north of five billion dollars with Cooper someone that will probably be approaching three million, if not above that, then you have Dias at like six hundred thousands. That's that's something that you absolutely have to take into consideration. And of course the fact that he is younger, that he is only twenty four years old. Aguilar is thirty, Cooper's thirty. So yeah, these three guys, first base is the primary position for all of them. First base is really the only position for two of them. It's contradictory from what the Marlins have said at many times during this rebuild about building an athletic in a versatile team. That this spits in the face of that. None of these guys are athletic or fast or really that versatile. And I don't see any snaring where they co exist on the roster next year. And I'm curious whether they co exist in the organization through this trade deadline, just because I mean, it's about time that Diaz gets tested at the major league level. There have been whispers from Marlin's executives that they feel Leywan is one of the very best prospects in their organization. I'm someone that I do think he has a strong causibility of being a full time caliber first baseman. He's probably not going to be the same type of heater, pure hit tool guy that Aguilar is. The trajectory of his swing it does bother me at times. It leads to a lot of those home runs, but also a lot of kind of innocuous flyouts as well. His launch angle gets too steep a lot of the times, and especially when you're playing a lot of home games at Loan Depot Park, you're not going to get rewarded for those. So is there a way that he could co exist with either Agalar or Cooper? Yeah, I mean, for one, the opposite handedness that Laywan swings from the left side in the who swing from the right side. So if there's any sort of scenario where I guess this would be kind of a worst case scenario where you don't feel that any of them are everyday players, you could have some sort of platoon situation, some sort of like rotation between them. Again, this is all assuming there's even a DH next year. I just it's not so much about it's a lot about the money, but it's even more so just about the roster spots being so precious that I just don't see a way where you're gonna have three of your twenty six active roster spots to first baseman next season in twenty twenty two. I'm just curious to hear what do you guys think about how the Marlins should resolve this? Again, we have Aguilar as really the most dependable of these guys now in back to back seasons, he's been such a great hitter, such a great clutch hitter, and for everything he does off the field with Cooper, he probably is like the biggest upside as a hitter alone. I mean, we've seen it in the last two years, but he just can't stay healthy. At this point, let me pull up quickly this number on gar Cooper that the Marlins what these last three years, these last four years he's been the organization now for four years at Cooper, in his four years in the Marlins organization, will have played in about forty percent of the possible games due to a variety of injuries, some of them really some fluky ones in there for sure, but ultimately it's the cliche that the best ability is availability, and he has just not had that at all with him. So I expect them to tender him a contract. The question is going to come down to whether they keep Aguilar through this deadline. I mean, they've been talking so highly about Leywin, and we just know the way that this position ages that despite how good Aguilar looks at age thirty, well now thirty one, he just celebrated his birthday and Cooper looks at age thirty, that these guys can fall off a cliff really quick. And the Marlins can't afford knowing that they already have enough offensive questions as they already have, and after map of trading away Starling Marte, they need to be very careful with who they invest in, with who they give these roster spots to. We could see a lot of clarity with this situation at the trade deadline again, even open that possibility that Agilar could get del he does have positive value and with Laywan kind of being redundant to him, even with the DH coming along, these next couple days will be very fascinating and assuming that they do hold on to Agilar, how exactly they split up that playing time between him and Laywin. Coming down the stretch in what is ultimately going to be a non contending heear that's one of the big storylines to follow during these final sixty games. Of course, the most pressing issue is the trade deadline involving Agilar evolving all the Marlins relievers. Maybe there are some dark horse candidates who get traded as well. Adam Duvall all that well, have you covered on fift stripes. Thank you guys for listening. I've been Elis Susman will have plenty more content coming up for you. Small pod along on the same feed Thursday morning. Friday morning. We'll have our live stream on Friday afternoon. Perfect timing that it'll be right after the trade deadline, but right before this much anticipated series against Jean Carlos Stanton in the Yankees. Good decisions or bad decisions or wait to see decisions. This is an interesting organization for sure. As always, appreciate you listening and go Fish
