00:00:13
Speaker 1: The show goes on.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: This is the official show on the fish Stripes podcast channel with Eli Sussman, the managing editor of fish Stripes.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: What do we do here?
00:00:24
Speaker 2: We cover your Miami Marlins every day in our own way. Be sure to subscribe to the pod wherever you normally get your pods to keep up with all of our audio offerings here on fish Stripes as well as full coverage of course at fishstripes dot com. I am doing some multitasking here on Wednesday night recording this pod for you guys as well as watching the conclusion of the Marlins versus Cardinals game. Hopefully this times up just rights that we get a conclusion to the close game which is scoreless at the moment, in time for me to add that. At the very end of the show, off the top had to give a shout out to Sandy Alcntra, having to this point his best start of the season. In his fourth career start against the Saint Louis Cardinals, his original team held them scoreless through eight innings. Only if I have this correct, the third pitcher in all of Major League Baseball this year to work eight complete innings. Given the abbreviated Spring training, the kind of efficiency and dominance you need, and frankly, this was not even a plus version of Sandy. It was close, it was great, but he didn't even need his A plus stuff to be terrific, so almost single handedly put the Marlins in front in this one. This week was just another reminder of how immensely fortunate the Marlins are to have signed him when they did, to the contract that they did. Meanwhile, in Colorado, the Rockies gave sixty four and a half million dollars to Kyle Freeland Sandy fifty six million at a similar stage of his career and just so much more potential in him. Early indications are that he's every bit as good as he was last year, if not even a little bit better. For a guy that really does get better every single year his following his career has been such a delight for me personally, and I'm sure for a lot of you guys as well. So hopefully by the end of this pot they're able to pull out what will look like to be a walk off win if they do win it for him at the very end, and end this on a more satisfying note, given, of course, the scars that we have of watching Sandy pitch so well in recent years without the run support that he deserves. On the other side of this break, we're going to get into geez Aggie and the Lizard.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: Stick with me.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Only four active Major League Baseball players have the first name Heyeseuss, and three of them are on the Fish incredible coincidence, all them acquired in very different ways. It's Hasu Sanchez, Haesus Lozardo, and Hasu's Aguilar calling this episode the Hasu's power rankings, which is sort of ironic in that we're at a time where the rankings can never be more clear between these three guys.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Imagine how differently we.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: Felt about them going back nine months ago, even the end of the regular season in twenty twenty one as well. But things have shifted in a pretty concise way in terms of the roles they have on this team, the starts that they've gotten off to here in twenty twenty two. Each of the three are very fascinating to me for different reasons, and I wanted to do these quick hits on each of them for this podcast episode. It's a power ranking, so we go from one to the bottom, and number one is very clear cut. At this moment in time, it is Hasu's.
00:03:51
Speaker 1: Sanchez, thank you, thank you so much.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: As of this recording, having a very quiet night, one of his few hitless games this year, and yet still hitting three forty one on the season in what is setting up to be his first full major league season, his third total with the Marlins. Jesus Sanchez, at times, really throughout most of his minor league career, regarded as a consensus top one hundred baseball prospect, but never a perfect one, and some of the doubts about him back then still hold true about his defense, about his plate discipline. Yet he is just such a gifted hitter, and ultimately that is the most important thing that any player can possess. That makes up for most of it. You know, he has flirted with an ops right around a thousand in the early going. So far this year, he has taken over as the everyday center fielder for the Marlins, which did not seem like his clear role until midway through spring training. Right we knew he was going to be on this Marlins opening day roster, he was going to get close to every day playing time, but it wasn't even clear whether he'd be in center field, whether he'd be in right with avas say el Garcia in centerfield. Potentially, it's he hadn't played any center at all for the Marlins and the Majors in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. He had scarcely played it even in the minors at any point in his career, despite always being you know, that key prospect in the organization that give him chances to do it. He's a lot bigger than most center fielders are, and he doesn't have the same agility as a typical centerfielder does. Yeah, there was an interesting piece a few days ago from Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald where he mentioned something from Keith Johnson, who works with the outfield defenders, about the Marlins and how they were putting a focus on him finishing plays defensively like that is. The one particular thing that stuck out about him last year is he does have really outstanding reaction time. That goes quite a ways towards making up for the lack of agility. Is that he gets really good reads on the balls, and at least initially his routes are sound. As I'm actually watching him at the plate here in the bottom of the eighth inning with a potential go ahead run on base for him.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: We'll see how that goes.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: In getting back to his defense, it was just about finishing plays. Very memorably. He had the bare handed catch in foul territory in right field late last season, which was a fun highlight, but ultimately came out of a poorly run rout. It was a mistake that he was able to redeem in the last possible instant. Watching him as much as I did last year, I didn't even think he was that great as a corner outfielder, so I had real concerns about him being a liability in center field, which would have been just magnified by the fact that he is sandwiched between Garcia and Jorge Solaire, neither of whom are particularly agile in the corner spots. It just was a really difficult assignment for him, playing half his games in lone debot park and most often being flanked by those two thirty something players. It was such a demanding role for him defensively that I did not think it was going to go well, and to this point in the season, it just reminds you how early we are. We really don't know. We don't know how good he is defensively. He had that one notable mistake in the opening series in San Francisco, where it looked like with ordinary effort most centerfielders would have been able to run it down and left centerfield gap. Aside from that, he just has not been tested. He has made all the players that have been hit to him as far as I can recall.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Of course, the.
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Beautiful stat cast system assigns a catch probability to every outfield play so far the season, and I cannot remember any place since then that has been catchable but has had like a less than eighty percent catch probability. There just have not been many challenges for him to this point. He hasn't been tested to to this small sample, so part of that is due to the Marlins pitching staff not allowing very many fly balls to center field. It's going to take some time to know exactly where he goes defensively, as I just saw him strike out on a pitch low on the zone here in the bottom of the eighth inning.
00:08:12
Speaker 1: This being one of the few hitless games.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: It drops his average to three point thirty three, which is still outstanding. A weighted runs created plus in the one eighties. I believe it's going to be where one hundred represents league average WRC plus. Is this that we use a lot on the side just to context major league production, and you can actually applied to any league that somebody plays in for his career. He is at one thirteen WRC plus and that is just as high as anybody on this active roster outside of Brian Delacruz with his small sample size two two, probably Iglesias Sanchez with a high drive deep right field and he's gone deep again. Second home run of the game four Hazu Shchez, even though he hasn't accomplished much to this point relative to the other players on this roster, it is very notable. It also drives home the fact that there's just not a lot of star power in this offense right now who you can trust to be reliable run producers. Considering that if you look at their career track records, even the ones that have been All Stars in the past and have been receiving accolades, that there are not a whole lot of guys that you would prefer to see high up in the laneup than Sanchez. Pretty much all season long, Sanchez has been with few exceptions, he's been batting in the top third of the order. They even had him lead off the other night, so picking apart his game a little bit, he has drawn only one walk to this point in the season. Forty something played appearances into the season only one walk. One of the pleasant developments from him last year was the willingness to walk. He was that an eight percent clip, right around league average for someone that was kind of gloriously over aggressive, and he has slipped into some bad habits this year. What I noticed is that he swings so much at the first pitch of a played appearance. It's not the highest rate in the league. In fact, it's not even the highest on the team because Aves El Garcia is the biggest offender in this department. Nearly fifty percent of his plate appearances, Sanchez is swinging at the first pitch, which has resulted in I could probably look it up how many hits he has on those first pitches, but also puts them in situations where the walk is almost off the table. If he's constantly in that situation, he has three of his hits on the first pitch so far this season. He's never going to be a guy I don't think that boasts that huge OBP or the one that has the big differential between his average and his OBP, and that's all right, But I do think he is kind of on a little bit too much on the aggressive side at this point in the season, and he's not going to be that batting title contender, that All Star player if he keeps it up at this rate. You know, eventually he's not going to have quite as much production on balls and play as he's had to this point in the season. Anyway you slice it, super encouraging first two weeks of the season for Sanchez. It does help validate the Marlins decision not to trade for a center fielder. I mean, the best of all worlds, in my opinion, would have been pulling off one of those trades and declining to sign both of the corner outfielders that they did. I felt like the money that they committed to both Garcia and Hilaire is going to come back to bite them a little bit. That's a conversation for another day. Sanchez pretty emphatically number one in my Haesius Power rankings.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: At the moment.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Number two Hayesius Lozardo, who was coming off his second start of the season on Tuesday against the Cardinals, which started off in the first stenning looking a lot like his season opening start dominance, and then from there on just got hit around, and it was very familiar to last season. So the question is where does he fall. Where's his real talent level at this point between what we saw in twenty twenty one and what we saw throughout spring training and in his season opening start where he was nearly perfect against the Angels. One particular detail about that Angel start, where he went five scoreless endings struck out twelve that I don't think got enough play afterwards is the impact that the shadows had in that game. It was a mid afternoon start time in LA in a stadium unlike Lone deepa park that doesn't have a retractable roof or anything, which means that the shadows come into play the way that most ballparks are oriented when you start games at that time, there is shadows that split between the mounds and home plate, as was the case for the first several innings of this game, and that made pitchers on both sides better both Lizardo and Patrick Sandoval of the Angels. It was never realistic to think that he was going to replicate that in his next start against anybody. I don't think there's going to be very many starts with him this year where he strikes out twelve, just because of some of the questions I still have about his fastball. You know, what stood out immediately in spring training is that the velocity is even higher than it was last year. For someone that has had plus velocity throughout most of his pro career, Like, you're really trending towards elite territory. With what he's shown early on this season, I could probably pull up the average. I think it's right around ninety eight miles per hour on his heaters this year, if not very close to that, which is just absurd for a left handed starting pitcher. It is right near the top of the heap of just pure stuff. With that, and with the quality of his breaking ball, which has always been awesome, and the adjustment he made towards the end of last season was just throwing the breaking ball away more than he ever had as before. He continued with that in spring training and he just carried that into the regular season as well. Yet to this point, through two starts, throwing his breaking bault nearly as much as his fastball forty five percent of the time, and that's going to be a pitch that is going to get a lot of whiffs as long as he is ahead of the count. That's going to be really crucial for him to get ahead of the count. And also for in order to get ahead of the count, you need to be actually miss some bats with your fastball. And that continues to be the question that I have with him about the shape of his past ball and whether he's able to miss bats with it, whether he's able to command it in the right spots, and even when he does, is going to actually miss barrels in a way that allows him to set up that great secondary stuff that he has. Yeah, in case you didn't follow his most recent outing. The final line from that second start against the Cardinals, who are an average ish offensive team all things considered, he went four and a third seven hits, two walks, five runs, four of them earned three strikeouts. The average together his first two starts a four to eight to two ERA and a one point twenty nine whip which honestly would not be like the worst outcome for his season, right considering he's coming off a year in twenty twenty one where he had a six and a half ERA and a one point.
00:15:19
Speaker 1: Six to two whip.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: You know, so if he shaves almost two runs off the ERA and one base runner every three innings, and he keeps the ball in the park, so that'll be a pretty big key is how much he's able to do that. One of the quiet storylines across baseball is that home runs are down quite a bit, more so than they have been each of the last three years or so. Lazarda last year allowed twenty home runs in ninety five and a third innings, which even by last year's standards was very bad. If he's a beneficiary of this change seemingly seems to be a change in the ball if at the very least a change in the playing conditions. If he's able to keep ball in the ballpark, that's going to be pretty big for him because he is going to get those strikeouts with the quality of his stuff at an above average clip. As we're here on the top of the ninth and it looks like Anthony Bender just blew the game. Yep, just allowed a game winning, likely game winning, a go ahead to around home run to Nolan Arenado. We'll revisit that again at the end of the pod as I finish up here on Louzardo, my second ranked hesus on the Marlins right now. So he just Lozardo made his last start against the Cardinals. Let's see, the next series they have is on the road against the Nationals. So he has lined up to start on Sunday against the Nationals, who you know, have won Soto but at this point have very little else which means it's a pretty favorable matchup. Oh, I should correct that it is against the Braves. The next year is against the Braves, then the Nationals, so his next start will be against the Braves in Atlanta. That is a different assignment, even with no Freddie Freeman, no Ronald Acuna junior back yet that is an above average offensive team on the road that Lozardo faces. That's going to be very fascinating to watch where he falls in between the two extremes that we saw in his season opening start and his second one. You guys, if you've been following my coverage entering the season, I was airing on the side of skepticism about Lozardo being significantly better than he had been previously, and so this is going to be a big data point in my evaluation, is how he does against the Braves in his third start of the season. Considering it's going to be the last game of the week and the last game at a sixth straight. You know that might be one where Jacob Stallings sits and they pair him with Peyton Henry, So we'll see what that might do working with Henry instead of Stallings in that one.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: Just speculating about what.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: The roadt what the day off might be for the catching position on his next start. Line Either way, with Lozardo, he it's not a make or break year for him. Of course, they got him as a big trade piece for Starrong Marte. They're gonna give him a bigg opportunity to stick in the rotation. If he is every bit as bad as he was last year, he would be the one you consider sending down to make room for some of these other great starting pitchers in the pipeline, like Edward Carbrera, like Max Meyer. But we're getting ahead of ourselves because unless he does struggle again, as much as he did against the Cardinals, and he does it several times, They're going to give him a long leash to prove himself. At this point. I believe he is on track to be under club control through twenty twenty six, so this season and then four more after that, and as long as he is just like a piece of the rotation, even at the very tail end of it, that would be a really nice pickup for them under the circumstances that they got him a lot to prove. But I am encouraged by the quality of the stuff and the usage of his stuff that we've seen really early on this season. Bringing up the rear of my HASI's power rankings, it is, of course Jesus Aguilar oh Boy, entering his third season with the Marlins, his final year before being eligible for free agency. I should say that earlier, about what a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, they signed him to I guess you would call it an extension. There's a mutual option for twenty twenty three, which rarely gets picked up.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: You never really see that happening.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: That's the one they had in place with Adam Duval last year, and unlike Duval. He doesn't have any years of control remaining on him. This is almost certainly going to be Aguilar's final year with the Marlins, the key question being whether he actually makes it through the entire.
00:19:52
Speaker 1: Year on the roster.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: So let me double check as I'm recording this live that Aguilar's about to bat, so I will carry on the segment until seeing his final plate appearance of this game in the bottom of the ninth inning. Entering today, across baseball, he was one of only nine qualified hitters without an extra base hit.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: Yikes.
00:20:11
Speaker 2: You know, with some guys that's not as worrisome as others. A huge part of Aggie's value is extra base hits. Is driving in runs, and the easiest way to do that is by getting extra base hits. You'll remember he got off to a pretty strong start last season. You know, there was a portion of time in late April or early May where he was leading the National League and runs batted in. He wasn't hitting for home runs early on last year, either, but he did show that there are other ways that he was being very productive even in spite of that. The difference this year is that there's no home runs and there's really nothing to make up for that, aside from a few walks. He is on the opposite end of the spectrum as Sanchez when it comes to plate discipline. Last year swing at the first pitch, I mentioned that Sanchez was close to fifty percent swinging at the first pitch. Aguilar is right around ten percent, almost an automatic first pitch take every single time last year and that has continued into this year. Throughout his career, he's been pretty far down there. The league average right around thirty percent, and for most of his career he was around fifteen. And then was last year that he added the extra discipline, which had overall was more of a positive than a negative. It's just that early on this year he might be leaning too far in that direction. So I dinged Sanchez for being a little too over aggressive and now Aguilar for the opposite reason. There was a perfect example earlier tonight where he got ahead in the count three to zero and then he just really wasn't looking to do anything on the next couple of pitches, got himself into a full count, and then in that full count just got surprised by a breaking ball and swung through it. In a situation where the game was tied. It was really important for him to do something if possible, on a night where the Marlins offense was dormant and he didn't really seem to be hitterish, as they say, not really looking to do much. Even so, he's been playing almost every day. He's been rotating almost equally constantly with Cooper between first base and DH. This was something that came up beginning in twenty twenty when both of them were on the same roster and the Marlins had the dhpot. It's a little bit comical at this point that it's an even rotation.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: It really is. Let me double check tonight tonight.
00:22:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, tonight being the tenth game that Hayesus Aguilar has played, and this has been his game logs of his defensive position DH first base, DH first Base, DH first base, DH first base, DH tonight first base. No imagination, really no discretion going into that decision. Don Mattingly, Happy birthday to Don Mattingly, by the way, turning sixty one's a day. He has kind of just put it in his mind to just swap those two evenly at that position, and frankly, Oggie is limited at first base. He had a really nice scoop tonight. He does have good hands over there for the most part, but just does not have the range and sometimes not really great thrower from first base either. Overall, I think he'd have to say slightly below average at that position, even though he has a lot of experience there. So if you're not going to have any versatility beyond that position, and if you don't play that position particularly well.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: You need to hit. And he's just not hitting.
00:23:42
Speaker 2: Just to get you the update stats at the moment, so he has one single tonight that should point out was the hardest hit ball that he has had this year, one hundred and two point two miles per hour. And if that sounds impressive in the vacuum, that's why I want to give you some context, because it is not impressive. The biggest issue with him right now is he's just not hitting the ball hard. That's a very critical skill to have as a hitter, and it's one that he has always been solid at. You. He has been the last several years consistently well above average with the quality of the contact that he makes with the maximum exit velocity that he has so last year according to stackass season then seventy fifth percentile in max exit v low, fifty fifth percentile in average exit VE low, so even above average in that regard. You go back to twenty twenty, very similar story, seventieth percentile, sixtieth percentile. You can go back to twenty nineteen, which was only the worst years of his career, and he was still above average average xmuth velocity that year, and this year he is really close to the bottom in baseball, especially for first basement. He's not hitting the ball hard. Already told you his max is one oh two, whereas in previous years it was one eleven, one ten, one twelve, one ten, one twelve. So it's a small sample size, but this is something that can normalize pretty quickly as he strikes out right here again in the bottom of the ninth let me give you the final updated stats that they'll be entering Thursday. He's hitting one seventy one. He is slugging one to seventy one. Real short list of guys that have a isolated power of zero, and he's one of the few that is a first baseman. Earning seven point five million dollars this year, final year of arbitration eligibility I've heard some people suggest cutting him, and that's just not going to happen, not even an option frankly until they yet perhaps into June. To consider that I was beating this drum since the offseason started that it just did not make sense to me that they were ever going to go into the season with Cooper, with Aggie and with Leywin Diaz all on the forty man roster, just because they weren't going to be able to coexist on the active roster at the same time when they're all just first base only guys. The fact that Marlin's committed over ten million dollars to the first basement between Aggie and Cooper, it puzzled me, especially with the fact that even last year Aggie's batted ball quality, his peripherals just were not quite as outstanding as even Cooper's were. So for as much as he means to the clubhouse, as great as he is with the fans and with the media, I just did not see the fit really here, and this start is a worst case scenario. He is playing really poorly to start the season. Our own Lewis Adio Weiss is going to have a full article on Aggie lar on fish.
00:26:37
Speaker 1: Stripes dot Com.
00:26:37
Speaker 2: That'll be up today probably right run you're listening to this, go check it out for more than data behind what we're seeing from him early on this season. An easy choice for the bottom spot in these Jesus Power rankings at this point in the season. So I don't really know how this shicks out. If he continues to be this bad. You know, if we get pretty deep into meg and he has no extra base, it's it could be a situation where they just make up an injury for him just to clear space on the forty man, either to call up a hot hitter from TRIPAA, whether that be Lewin Diaz or whether it be paid in Verdick somebody like that that's a little bit more athletic and it can actually perform.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Of course, the one thing I didn't mention about Aggie.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: Is that he's one of the slowest players in baseball, and people have a lot of fun with that, with his physique and with his lack of agility, and you can kind of laugh it off when he's excelling in other departments, and the problem is when he's not excelling in other departments, it creates this very tense situation where he's one of the biggest disappointments of this team so far, and despite being that he is. I gave you his defensive positions each game. These are his batting order positions so far this season. Fourth third, fourth, fourth, fourth, fourth, third, third, third, fourth. He's always in the top half of the lineup for this team, a team that to this point in the season has been a little bit underwhelming offensively, and for him if he if you just know that he's not going to give you anything when he's on base. While it's nice that he draws those walks and tonight a single, so he got his decent mix of walks and singles, but those are kind of valueless or a lot less valuable for him than anybody else, just because of how slow he is. You're not going to score him from first base without hitting it over the wall or with sequencing a few different hits. Despite the RBI total that he's had, despite the intangibles, even the best version of himself last year, is just not a super valuable player on the field for a team that desperately needs value from its position players at this point in the year. No, uh, I'm not going to totally freak out at this point. But I've officially, you know, Race the alarm about concerns about Aggie. I think it's a fair call right now to actually move him down in the lineup. I don't think that's too much of a demand to ask why is he consistently batting above Joey Wendall in the lineup?
00:29:15
Speaker 1: As one example, that's a secret baby, I'm sorry.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: As I'm watching Brian Anderson draw walk. That's another topic about BA and how much flack that he took in spring training and early in the year for his initial struggles. But I'd rather have Brian Anderson at the blade right now, higher up in the lineup than I would Aguilar. That's the most immediate thing that I want to see from Mattingley. Of course, people have mentioned Jazz the case for Jazz moving up.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: In the lineup.
00:29:45
Speaker 2: There's really no argument right now for Jazz be batting less often than Aggie is, especially knowing that he is athleticism wise, what he can do as a base runner is so much different.
00:29:56
Speaker 1: Than what Aggie can do.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something that I think it's fair to expect change as soon as this weekend. With moving Aguilar down into the bottom half of the lineup and not necessarily making him an everyday player if he's not going to be driving the ball with authority. The baseline stats don't like it, the peripheral stats don't like it, and I think I've made my point already clearly. As we come up on the half hour mark of this podcast, the Marlins game is still not over. Watching the bottom of the order get its shot in the bottom of the ninth inning against Giovanni Diegos, Marlins down to nothing, but with the potential tying runs on base. So I think we got this wrapped up even before the game is over, and you'll know by the time you're listening to this how they that game played out. Regardless, the Marlins will still be below five hundred with a negative run differential on the season. All things considered, the team does show the makings of being better than last year. I think that's something that even the most pessimistic person can notice that notice the different and how some of the moves are coming together. But it will take key players like Lizardo to deliver on the best case scenario for them, and one's like Aguilar to at least be within striking distance of the player that he was just in twenty twenty one, because he was a bright spot last year. For him to go from a bright spot to one that is dragging down everybody else right now, that's pretty unfortunate, and you don't want to see an ugly ending to his tenure because overall he has been a really nice pickup for this team this year. And I don't need to sell you on, Hey, sus Sanchez, we know exactly why he's going to be thrilling to watch, and he's going to be for the foreseeable future penciled in as a pretty much everyday player in a way that we couldn't have probably anticipated just a few months ago. Geezy, Aggie and Lizard all fascinating to me for different reasons. This has been the official show with Eli Sussman. Got a couple episodes on deck for you guys next week and every other week moving forward throughout the regular season. Lining up a special guest that I don't want to announce quite yet, but let's say it's going to be related to Miguel Cabrera reaching three thousand career hits, as he's about to with the Detroit Tigers former Marlins legend, so it's going to be related to that. It's going to be a great mix of history as well as modern Marlins twenty twenty two analysis as well. Be sure to join our live stream previewing will be the Marlins and Brave series on Friday Night. We do those prior to the start of every series. Make your Fish Picks free prop bets prior to every series as well at bit dot l y Slash twenty twenty two fish Picks, and you can find that link everywhere on the site as well. It's I'm glad to have baseball back to be in the middle of this, to finally have enough data about these players here in twenty twenty two to start reaching meaningful analytical conclusions about them. And I hope you guys appreciated the way that I broke it down between the three Hejesuses so far this season. Appreciate the support and as always, go Fish
Speaker 1: The show goes on.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: This is the official show on the fish Stripes podcast channel with Eli Sussman, the managing editor of fish Stripes.
00:00:23
Speaker 1: What do we do here?
00:00:24
Speaker 2: We cover your Miami Marlins every day in our own way. Be sure to subscribe to the pod wherever you normally get your pods to keep up with all of our audio offerings here on fish Stripes as well as full coverage of course at fishstripes dot com. I am doing some multitasking here on Wednesday night recording this pod for you guys as well as watching the conclusion of the Marlins versus Cardinals game. Hopefully this times up just rights that we get a conclusion to the close game which is scoreless at the moment, in time for me to add that. At the very end of the show, off the top had to give a shout out to Sandy Alcntra, having to this point his best start of the season. In his fourth career start against the Saint Louis Cardinals, his original team held them scoreless through eight innings. Only if I have this correct, the third pitcher in all of Major League Baseball this year to work eight complete innings. Given the abbreviated Spring training, the kind of efficiency and dominance you need, and frankly, this was not even a plus version of Sandy. It was close, it was great, but he didn't even need his A plus stuff to be terrific, so almost single handedly put the Marlins in front in this one. This week was just another reminder of how immensely fortunate the Marlins are to have signed him when they did, to the contract that they did. Meanwhile, in Colorado, the Rockies gave sixty four and a half million dollars to Kyle Freeland Sandy fifty six million at a similar stage of his career and just so much more potential in him. Early indications are that he's every bit as good as he was last year, if not even a little bit better. For a guy that really does get better every single year his following his career has been such a delight for me personally, and I'm sure for a lot of you guys as well. So hopefully by the end of this pot they're able to pull out what will look like to be a walk off win if they do win it for him at the very end, and end this on a more satisfying note, given, of course, the scars that we have of watching Sandy pitch so well in recent years without the run support that he deserves. On the other side of this break, we're going to get into geez Aggie and the Lizard.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: Stick with me.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Only four active Major League Baseball players have the first name Heyeseuss, and three of them are on the Fish incredible coincidence, all them acquired in very different ways. It's Hasu Sanchez, Haesus Lozardo, and Hasu's Aguilar calling this episode the Hasu's power rankings, which is sort of ironic in that we're at a time where the rankings can never be more clear between these three guys.
00:03:19
Speaker 1: Imagine how differently we.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: Felt about them going back nine months ago, even the end of the regular season in twenty twenty one as well. But things have shifted in a pretty concise way in terms of the roles they have on this team, the starts that they've gotten off to here in twenty twenty two. Each of the three are very fascinating to me for different reasons, and I wanted to do these quick hits on each of them for this podcast episode. It's a power ranking, so we go from one to the bottom, and number one is very clear cut. At this moment in time, it is Hasu's.
00:03:51
Speaker 1: Sanchez, thank you, thank you so much.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: As of this recording, having a very quiet night, one of his few hitless games this year, and yet still hitting three forty one on the season in what is setting up to be his first full major league season, his third total with the Marlins. Jesus Sanchez, at times, really throughout most of his minor league career, regarded as a consensus top one hundred baseball prospect, but never a perfect one, and some of the doubts about him back then still hold true about his defense, about his plate discipline. Yet he is just such a gifted hitter, and ultimately that is the most important thing that any player can possess. That makes up for most of it. You know, he has flirted with an ops right around a thousand in the early going. So far this year, he has taken over as the everyday center fielder for the Marlins, which did not seem like his clear role until midway through spring training. Right we knew he was going to be on this Marlins opening day roster, he was going to get close to every day playing time, but it wasn't even clear whether he'd be in center field, whether he'd be in right with avas say el Garcia in centerfield. Potentially, it's he hadn't played any center at all for the Marlins and the Majors in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one. He had scarcely played it even in the minors at any point in his career, despite always being you know, that key prospect in the organization that give him chances to do it. He's a lot bigger than most center fielders are, and he doesn't have the same agility as a typical centerfielder does. Yeah, there was an interesting piece a few days ago from Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald where he mentioned something from Keith Johnson, who works with the outfield defenders, about the Marlins and how they were putting a focus on him finishing plays defensively like that is. The one particular thing that stuck out about him last year is he does have really outstanding reaction time. That goes quite a ways towards making up for the lack of agility. Is that he gets really good reads on the balls, and at least initially his routes are sound. As I'm actually watching him at the plate here in the bottom of the eighth inning with a potential go ahead run on base for him.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: We'll see how that goes.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: In getting back to his defense, it was just about finishing plays. Very memorably. He had the bare handed catch in foul territory in right field late last season, which was a fun highlight, but ultimately came out of a poorly run rout. It was a mistake that he was able to redeem in the last possible instant. Watching him as much as I did last year, I didn't even think he was that great as a corner outfielder, so I had real concerns about him being a liability in center field, which would have been just magnified by the fact that he is sandwiched between Garcia and Jorge Solaire, neither of whom are particularly agile in the corner spots. It just was a really difficult assignment for him, playing half his games in lone debot park and most often being flanked by those two thirty something players. It was such a demanding role for him defensively that I did not think it was going to go well, and to this point in the season, it just reminds you how early we are. We really don't know. We don't know how good he is defensively. He had that one notable mistake in the opening series in San Francisco, where it looked like with ordinary effort most centerfielders would have been able to run it down and left centerfield gap. Aside from that, he just has not been tested. He has made all the players that have been hit to him as far as I can recall.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: Of course, the.
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Beautiful stat cast system assigns a catch probability to every outfield play so far the season, and I cannot remember any place since then that has been catchable but has had like a less than eighty percent catch probability. There just have not been many challenges for him to this point. He hasn't been tested to to this small sample, so part of that is due to the Marlins pitching staff not allowing very many fly balls to center field. It's going to take some time to know exactly where he goes defensively, as I just saw him strike out on a pitch low on the zone here in the bottom of the eighth inning.
00:08:12
Speaker 1: This being one of the few hitless games.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: It drops his average to three point thirty three, which is still outstanding. A weighted runs created plus in the one eighties. I believe it's going to be where one hundred represents league average WRC plus. Is this that we use a lot on the side just to context major league production, and you can actually applied to any league that somebody plays in for his career. He is at one thirteen WRC plus and that is just as high as anybody on this active roster outside of Brian Delacruz with his small sample size two two, probably Iglesias Sanchez with a high drive deep right field and he's gone deep again. Second home run of the game four Hazu Shchez, even though he hasn't accomplished much to this point relative to the other players on this roster, it is very notable. It also drives home the fact that there's just not a lot of star power in this offense right now who you can trust to be reliable run producers. Considering that if you look at their career track records, even the ones that have been All Stars in the past and have been receiving accolades, that there are not a whole lot of guys that you would prefer to see high up in the laneup than Sanchez. Pretty much all season long, Sanchez has been with few exceptions, he's been batting in the top third of the order. They even had him lead off the other night, so picking apart his game a little bit, he has drawn only one walk to this point in the season. Forty something played appearances into the season only one walk. One of the pleasant developments from him last year was the willingness to walk. He was that an eight percent clip, right around league average for someone that was kind of gloriously over aggressive, and he has slipped into some bad habits this year. What I noticed is that he swings so much at the first pitch of a played appearance. It's not the highest rate in the league. In fact, it's not even the highest on the team because Aves El Garcia is the biggest offender in this department. Nearly fifty percent of his plate appearances, Sanchez is swinging at the first pitch, which has resulted in I could probably look it up how many hits he has on those first pitches, but also puts them in situations where the walk is almost off the table. If he's constantly in that situation, he has three of his hits on the first pitch so far this season. He's never going to be a guy I don't think that boasts that huge OBP or the one that has the big differential between his average and his OBP, and that's all right, But I do think he is kind of on a little bit too much on the aggressive side at this point in the season, and he's not going to be that batting title contender, that All Star player if he keeps it up at this rate. You know, eventually he's not going to have quite as much production on balls and play as he's had to this point in the season. Anyway you slice it, super encouraging first two weeks of the season for Sanchez. It does help validate the Marlins decision not to trade for a center fielder. I mean, the best of all worlds, in my opinion, would have been pulling off one of those trades and declining to sign both of the corner outfielders that they did. I felt like the money that they committed to both Garcia and Hilaire is going to come back to bite them a little bit. That's a conversation for another day. Sanchez pretty emphatically number one in my Haesius Power rankings.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: At the moment.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: Number two Hayesius Lozardo, who was coming off his second start of the season on Tuesday against the Cardinals, which started off in the first stenning looking a lot like his season opening start dominance, and then from there on just got hit around, and it was very familiar to last season. So the question is where does he fall. Where's his real talent level at this point between what we saw in twenty twenty one and what we saw throughout spring training and in his season opening start where he was nearly perfect against the Angels. One particular detail about that Angel start, where he went five scoreless endings struck out twelve that I don't think got enough play afterwards is the impact that the shadows had in that game. It was a mid afternoon start time in LA in a stadium unlike Lone deepa park that doesn't have a retractable roof or anything, which means that the shadows come into play the way that most ballparks are oriented when you start games at that time, there is shadows that split between the mounds and home plate, as was the case for the first several innings of this game, and that made pitchers on both sides better both Lizardo and Patrick Sandoval of the Angels. It was never realistic to think that he was going to replicate that in his next start against anybody. I don't think there's going to be very many starts with him this year where he strikes out twelve, just because of some of the questions I still have about his fastball. You know, what stood out immediately in spring training is that the velocity is even higher than it was last year. For someone that has had plus velocity throughout most of his pro career, Like, you're really trending towards elite territory. With what he's shown early on this season, I could probably pull up the average. I think it's right around ninety eight miles per hour on his heaters this year, if not very close to that, which is just absurd for a left handed starting pitcher. It is right near the top of the heap of just pure stuff. With that, and with the quality of his breaking ball, which has always been awesome, and the adjustment he made towards the end of last season was just throwing the breaking ball away more than he ever had as before. He continued with that in spring training and he just carried that into the regular season as well. Yet to this point, through two starts, throwing his breaking bault nearly as much as his fastball forty five percent of the time, and that's going to be a pitch that is going to get a lot of whiffs as long as he is ahead of the count. That's going to be really crucial for him to get ahead of the count. And also for in order to get ahead of the count, you need to be actually miss some bats with your fastball. And that continues to be the question that I have with him about the shape of his past ball and whether he's able to miss bats with it, whether he's able to command it in the right spots, and even when he does, is going to actually miss barrels in a way that allows him to set up that great secondary stuff that he has. Yeah, in case you didn't follow his most recent outing. The final line from that second start against the Cardinals, who are an average ish offensive team all things considered, he went four and a third seven hits, two walks, five runs, four of them earned three strikeouts. The average together his first two starts a four to eight to two ERA and a one point twenty nine whip which honestly would not be like the worst outcome for his season, right considering he's coming off a year in twenty twenty one where he had a six and a half ERA and a one point.
00:15:19
Speaker 1: Six to two whip.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: You know, so if he shaves almost two runs off the ERA and one base runner every three innings, and he keeps the ball in the park, so that'll be a pretty big key is how much he's able to do that. One of the quiet storylines across baseball is that home runs are down quite a bit, more so than they have been each of the last three years or so. Lazarda last year allowed twenty home runs in ninety five and a third innings, which even by last year's standards was very bad. If he's a beneficiary of this change seemingly seems to be a change in the ball if at the very least a change in the playing conditions. If he's able to keep ball in the ballpark, that's going to be pretty big for him because he is going to get those strikeouts with the quality of his stuff at an above average clip. As we're here on the top of the ninth and it looks like Anthony Bender just blew the game. Yep, just allowed a game winning, likely game winning, a go ahead to around home run to Nolan Arenado. We'll revisit that again at the end of the pod as I finish up here on Louzardo, my second ranked hesus on the Marlins right now. So he just Lozardo made his last start against the Cardinals. Let's see, the next series they have is on the road against the Nationals. So he has lined up to start on Sunday against the Nationals, who you know, have won Soto but at this point have very little else which means it's a pretty favorable matchup. Oh, I should correct that it is against the Braves. The next year is against the Braves, then the Nationals, so his next start will be against the Braves in Atlanta. That is a different assignment, even with no Freddie Freeman, no Ronald Acuna junior back yet that is an above average offensive team on the road that Lozardo faces. That's going to be very fascinating to watch where he falls in between the two extremes that we saw in his season opening start and his second one. You guys, if you've been following my coverage entering the season, I was airing on the side of skepticism about Lozardo being significantly better than he had been previously, and so this is going to be a big data point in my evaluation, is how he does against the Braves in his third start of the season. Considering it's going to be the last game of the week and the last game at a sixth straight. You know that might be one where Jacob Stallings sits and they pair him with Peyton Henry, So we'll see what that might do working with Henry instead of Stallings in that one.
00:17:51
Speaker 1: Just speculating about what.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: The roadt what the day off might be for the catching position on his next start. Line Either way, with Lozardo, he it's not a make or break year for him. Of course, they got him as a big trade piece for Starrong Marte. They're gonna give him a bigg opportunity to stick in the rotation. If he is every bit as bad as he was last year, he would be the one you consider sending down to make room for some of these other great starting pitchers in the pipeline, like Edward Carbrera, like Max Meyer. But we're getting ahead of ourselves because unless he does struggle again, as much as he did against the Cardinals, and he does it several times, They're going to give him a long leash to prove himself. At this point. I believe he is on track to be under club control through twenty twenty six, so this season and then four more after that, and as long as he is just like a piece of the rotation, even at the very tail end of it, that would be a really nice pickup for them under the circumstances that they got him a lot to prove. But I am encouraged by the quality of the stuff and the usage of his stuff that we've seen really early on this season. Bringing up the rear of my HASI's power rankings, it is, of course Jesus Aguilar oh Boy, entering his third season with the Marlins, his final year before being eligible for free agency. I should say that earlier, about what a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, they signed him to I guess you would call it an extension. There's a mutual option for twenty twenty three, which rarely gets picked up.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: You never really see that happening.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: That's the one they had in place with Adam Duval last year, and unlike Duval. He doesn't have any years of control remaining on him. This is almost certainly going to be Aguilar's final year with the Marlins, the key question being whether he actually makes it through the entire.
00:19:52
Speaker 1: Year on the roster.
00:19:54
Speaker 2: So let me double check as I'm recording this live that Aguilar's about to bat, so I will carry on the segment until seeing his final plate appearance of this game in the bottom of the ninth inning. Entering today, across baseball, he was one of only nine qualified hitters without an extra base hit.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: Yikes.
00:20:11
Speaker 2: You know, with some guys that's not as worrisome as others. A huge part of Aggie's value is extra base hits. Is driving in runs, and the easiest way to do that is by getting extra base hits. You'll remember he got off to a pretty strong start last season. You know, there was a portion of time in late April or early May where he was leading the National League and runs batted in. He wasn't hitting for home runs early on last year, either, but he did show that there are other ways that he was being very productive even in spite of that. The difference this year is that there's no home runs and there's really nothing to make up for that, aside from a few walks. He is on the opposite end of the spectrum as Sanchez when it comes to plate discipline. Last year swing at the first pitch, I mentioned that Sanchez was close to fifty percent swinging at the first pitch. Aguilar is right around ten percent, almost an automatic first pitch take every single time last year and that has continued into this year. Throughout his career, he's been pretty far down there. The league average right around thirty percent, and for most of his career he was around fifteen. And then was last year that he added the extra discipline, which had overall was more of a positive than a negative. It's just that early on this year he might be leaning too far in that direction. So I dinged Sanchez for being a little too over aggressive and now Aguilar for the opposite reason. There was a perfect example earlier tonight where he got ahead in the count three to zero and then he just really wasn't looking to do anything on the next couple of pitches, got himself into a full count, and then in that full count just got surprised by a breaking ball and swung through it. In a situation where the game was tied. It was really important for him to do something if possible, on a night where the Marlins offense was dormant and he didn't really seem to be hitterish, as they say, not really looking to do much. Even so, he's been playing almost every day. He's been rotating almost equally constantly with Cooper between first base and DH. This was something that came up beginning in twenty twenty when both of them were on the same roster and the Marlins had the dhpot. It's a little bit comical at this point that it's an even rotation.
00:22:31
Speaker 1: It really is. Let me double check tonight tonight.
00:22:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, tonight being the tenth game that Hayesus Aguilar has played, and this has been his game logs of his defensive position DH first base, DH first Base, DH first base, DH first base, DH tonight first base. No imagination, really no discretion going into that decision. Don Mattingly, Happy birthday to Don Mattingly, by the way, turning sixty one's a day. He has kind of just put it in his mind to just swap those two evenly at that position, and frankly, Oggie is limited at first base. He had a really nice scoop tonight. He does have good hands over there for the most part, but just does not have the range and sometimes not really great thrower from first base either. Overall, I think he'd have to say slightly below average at that position, even though he has a lot of experience there. So if you're not going to have any versatility beyond that position, and if you don't play that position particularly well.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: You need to hit. And he's just not hitting.
00:23:42
Speaker 2: Just to get you the update stats at the moment, so he has one single tonight that should point out was the hardest hit ball that he has had this year, one hundred and two point two miles per hour. And if that sounds impressive in the vacuum, that's why I want to give you some context, because it is not impressive. The biggest issue with him right now is he's just not hitting the ball hard. That's a very critical skill to have as a hitter, and it's one that he has always been solid at. You. He has been the last several years consistently well above average with the quality of the contact that he makes with the maximum exit velocity that he has so last year according to stackass season then seventy fifth percentile in max exit v low, fifty fifth percentile in average exit VE low, so even above average in that regard. You go back to twenty twenty, very similar story, seventieth percentile, sixtieth percentile. You can go back to twenty nineteen, which was only the worst years of his career, and he was still above average average xmuth velocity that year, and this year he is really close to the bottom in baseball, especially for first basement. He's not hitting the ball hard. Already told you his max is one oh two, whereas in previous years it was one eleven, one ten, one twelve, one ten, one twelve. So it's a small sample size, but this is something that can normalize pretty quickly as he strikes out right here again in the bottom of the ninth let me give you the final updated stats that they'll be entering Thursday. He's hitting one seventy one. He is slugging one to seventy one. Real short list of guys that have a isolated power of zero, and he's one of the few that is a first baseman. Earning seven point five million dollars this year, final year of arbitration eligibility I've heard some people suggest cutting him, and that's just not going to happen, not even an option frankly until they yet perhaps into June. To consider that I was beating this drum since the offseason started that it just did not make sense to me that they were ever going to go into the season with Cooper, with Aggie and with Leywin Diaz all on the forty man roster, just because they weren't going to be able to coexist on the active roster at the same time when they're all just first base only guys. The fact that Marlin's committed over ten million dollars to the first basement between Aggie and Cooper, it puzzled me, especially with the fact that even last year Aggie's batted ball quality, his peripherals just were not quite as outstanding as even Cooper's were. So for as much as he means to the clubhouse, as great as he is with the fans and with the media, I just did not see the fit really here, and this start is a worst case scenario. He is playing really poorly to start the season. Our own Lewis Adio Weiss is going to have a full article on Aggie lar on fish.
00:26:37
Speaker 1: Stripes dot Com.
00:26:37
Speaker 2: That'll be up today probably right run you're listening to this, go check it out for more than data behind what we're seeing from him early on this season. An easy choice for the bottom spot in these Jesus Power rankings at this point in the season. So I don't really know how this shicks out. If he continues to be this bad. You know, if we get pretty deep into meg and he has no extra base, it's it could be a situation where they just make up an injury for him just to clear space on the forty man, either to call up a hot hitter from TRIPAA, whether that be Lewin Diaz or whether it be paid in Verdick somebody like that that's a little bit more athletic and it can actually perform.
00:27:21
Speaker 1: Of course, the one thing I didn't mention about Aggie.
00:27:23
Speaker 2: Is that he's one of the slowest players in baseball, and people have a lot of fun with that, with his physique and with his lack of agility, and you can kind of laugh it off when he's excelling in other departments, and the problem is when he's not excelling in other departments, it creates this very tense situation where he's one of the biggest disappointments of this team so far, and despite being that he is. I gave you his defensive positions each game. These are his batting order positions so far this season. Fourth third, fourth, fourth, fourth, fourth, third, third, third, fourth. He's always in the top half of the lineup for this team, a team that to this point in the season has been a little bit underwhelming offensively, and for him if he if you just know that he's not going to give you anything when he's on base. While it's nice that he draws those walks and tonight a single, so he got his decent mix of walks and singles, but those are kind of valueless or a lot less valuable for him than anybody else, just because of how slow he is. You're not going to score him from first base without hitting it over the wall or with sequencing a few different hits. Despite the RBI total that he's had, despite the intangibles, even the best version of himself last year, is just not a super valuable player on the field for a team that desperately needs value from its position players at this point in the year. No, uh, I'm not going to totally freak out at this point. But I've officially, you know, Race the alarm about concerns about Aggie. I think it's a fair call right now to actually move him down in the lineup. I don't think that's too much of a demand to ask why is he consistently batting above Joey Wendall in the lineup?
00:29:15
Speaker 1: As one example, that's a secret baby, I'm sorry.
00:29:19
Speaker 2: As I'm watching Brian Anderson draw walk. That's another topic about BA and how much flack that he took in spring training and early in the year for his initial struggles. But I'd rather have Brian Anderson at the blade right now, higher up in the lineup than I would Aguilar. That's the most immediate thing that I want to see from Mattingley. Of course, people have mentioned Jazz the case for Jazz moving up.
00:29:43
Speaker 1: In the lineup.
00:29:45
Speaker 2: There's really no argument right now for Jazz be batting less often than Aggie is, especially knowing that he is athleticism wise, what he can do as a base runner is so much different.
00:29:56
Speaker 1: Than what Aggie can do.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something that I think it's fair to expect change as soon as this weekend. With moving Aguilar down into the bottom half of the lineup and not necessarily making him an everyday player if he's not going to be driving the ball with authority. The baseline stats don't like it, the peripheral stats don't like it, and I think I've made my point already clearly. As we come up on the half hour mark of this podcast, the Marlins game is still not over. Watching the bottom of the order get its shot in the bottom of the ninth inning against Giovanni Diegos, Marlins down to nothing, but with the potential tying runs on base. So I think we got this wrapped up even before the game is over, and you'll know by the time you're listening to this how they that game played out. Regardless, the Marlins will still be below five hundred with a negative run differential on the season. All things considered, the team does show the makings of being better than last year. I think that's something that even the most pessimistic person can notice that notice the different and how some of the moves are coming together. But it will take key players like Lizardo to deliver on the best case scenario for them, and one's like Aguilar to at least be within striking distance of the player that he was just in twenty twenty one, because he was a bright spot last year. For him to go from a bright spot to one that is dragging down everybody else right now, that's pretty unfortunate, and you don't want to see an ugly ending to his tenure because overall he has been a really nice pickup for this team this year. And I don't need to sell you on, Hey, sus Sanchez, we know exactly why he's going to be thrilling to watch, and he's going to be for the foreseeable future penciled in as a pretty much everyday player in a way that we couldn't have probably anticipated just a few months ago. Geezy, Aggie and Lizard all fascinating to me for different reasons. This has been the official show with Eli Sussman. Got a couple episodes on deck for you guys next week and every other week moving forward throughout the regular season. Lining up a special guest that I don't want to announce quite yet, but let's say it's going to be related to Miguel Cabrera reaching three thousand career hits, as he's about to with the Detroit Tigers former Marlins legend, so it's going to be related to that. It's going to be a great mix of history as well as modern Marlins twenty twenty two analysis as well. Be sure to join our live stream previewing will be the Marlins and Brave series on Friday Night. We do those prior to the start of every series. Make your Fish Picks free prop bets prior to every series as well at bit dot l y Slash twenty twenty two fish Picks, and you can find that link everywhere on the site as well. It's I'm glad to have baseball back to be in the middle of this, to finally have enough data about these players here in twenty twenty two to start reaching meaningful analytical conclusions about them. And I hope you guys appreciated the way that I broke it down between the three Hejesuses so far this season. Appreciate the support and as always, go Fish
