Ubelievable: that's true, the demographics are not the owners' fault. But their self-defeating conduct in terms of building fan loyalty is certainly their fault. "Suffering " is right about the destructive effects of the fire sales, except for one thing: as the Cabrera deal of last year illustrates, we're now in the midst of a slow-motion perpetual fire sale and the fans aren't ignoring that either. That in the cases of both dismantlings we had particularly astute GMs - Dave Dombrowski under Huizinga and Larry Bienfest under the current regime - who brought in remarkably talented prospects and renovation projects helped a little. They gave us the players whose exploits we enjoy now. However, on the flip side, the fans expect these kids to disappear as soon as they've been fattened up for market. This keeps many fans from getting attached to them, which in turn further undermines fan support. There's no way to run this franchise without a significant investment in the future and a willingness to take some hits until the fans get the debacles of the past decade out of their systems. That's going to take time. If Loria runs this team on a shoestring, these crowds are as big as they're going to get - ever. (17 hrs ago | post #63)
Fla. House defends Cuba travel restrictions
Voss (any relation to the Patrick White character?): absolutely. It's immaterial anyway because the gasbags in Tallahassee know that quite well. It was all a bunch of election-year grandstanding. (17 hrs ago | post #9)
Chicago Cubs score 8 runs in 7th, beat Florida Marlins 9-2
Horrible loss. The minute I saw Pinto get up in the bullpen I knew it was going to end badly. Why does Fredi keep trotting out his top batting practice pitcher when he's got Rhodes, who has been effective all year, in the pen for lefthanded relief? Does Fredi maybe have a gas generator in his skull that runs on brain **** *rts? Ah well, at least the impending tropical storm or Hurricane Fay will take my mind off of this Keystone Kops act for a few days. Once we get the shutters closed, I plan to lay back and celebrate the Marlins' west coast road trip by re-reading "Blood Meridian" by flashlight. When I re-emerge, I hope there'll be enough electricity available to see how the Fish are managing out west. (Sunday | post #10)
Marlins Fan: why not stash the gratuitous insults and answer the question Old Pro has posed? It's a perfectly legitimate question and seems to me the more important issue than his typos. (Saturday Aug 16 | post #93)
Erick: ANS wasn't talking stats, but a psychological situation that arises when a pitcher consistently is unable to keep runners off the bases in the late innings, whether they score or not. Gregg has been only one thing consistently this year, and that is streaky. He's 6-5, which tells you that, since he almost always comes in with the Fish up by a run or two, he has let the opposition even the score nearly a dozen times. I wonder how many of those six wins he entered with the score tied. If more than one or two, I'd be shocked. All of this, of course, doesn't event take into account how many inherited runners he's allowed to score. Point is, you have no right coming on here and demonstrating what a jackass you are by calling an idiot someone who backed up his opinion with perfectly substantial logic. (Saturday Aug 16 | post #38)
Ludwick helps Cardinals to win over Marlins
ROFL. Sorry, we have four large dogs. That line had me laughing till my rib cage muscles began to separate. (Saturday Aug 16 | post #9)
>sigh< I think the correspondent above who said the Fish are on their slide out of contention is correct. At the moment I have more important things to do than sit here and comment on a declining team - there's a hurricane on the horizon and I got some awnings to unlace and some shutters to close. But here's a few quick thoughts: This is about the same time that they began to wheeze and sputter under Girardi, except that I suspect if Girardi were still here, this particular iteration of the Fish would be holding up a lot better. More and more of Fredi's decisions are beginning to smack of mental paralysis (as opposed to his normal active form of stupidity). His hopeless confidence in Willingham is an example. The batting fielding and baserunning coaches don't seem to be making a dent in the collective cluelessness of the players at the moment. Maybe Gregg wants to attribute the loss to one bad pitch, but those guys were on base ahead of Ward because he couldn't get over the plate in the first place. I don't think Gregg has been "dominant. " A truly dominant closer works one two three innings on a routine basis. As another correspondent mentioned above, Gregg does his Mitch Williams impersonation most of the time instead. He was doing it last night when he decided to play Renyel Pinto for one miserable pitch. Well, it's been good low budget fun for the past four and a half months, but I suspect it's time to sit back and watch the big boys take over now. (Saturday Aug 16 | post #29)
Marlins suffer loss on field of nightmares
Another miserable loss last night.... (Friday Aug 15 | post #95)
Jacobs has hit some home runs and driven in runs since the break, which Buddha knows they need, but his OBP is still one of the most anemic in baseball and his fielding - like in tonight's (8/14) game - is still pretty bad. All of his RBIs still amount to a team playing roughly .500 ball. I suspect that if he hit fewer home runs but got on base more often and scored more runs, and moved runners along a lot better than he does, the team's record would be somewhat better. I'd be interested to see his overall RISP batting average and suspect it won't look good. Same goes for all the guys who seem to have become human windmills since the break. Is that Fredi Gonzalez in the dugout, or is it really Sancho Panza? Marlins Fan: a little suggestion. If you don't like Lou's style of humor, ignore it. These little verbal dysentery attacks of yours are getting tedious. Since you miss two thirds of it anyway, you might as well go find some more obvious posts to read - or at the very least, let's see some comments that are as specifically addressed to the game in question or show a modicum of the effort Lou expends to look up stats, instead of all these sour diatribes of yours. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #90)
Ludwick helps Cardinals to win over Marlins
Lou - an awful, spiritless loss. Olsen did his bit, but the fielding sabotaged him - the pickoff that wound up in left field, the RBI that should not have been on base. Another fizzle with the bases loaded. Is there any way to check on how many times since the all-star break the Marlins have (a) loaded the bases with less than 2 outs and failed to score, and (b) how many times they have left the bases loaded and/or hit into a DP with the bases loaded to end an inning? Also, how many times have they been shut out since the all star break? I'm sure it feels like more than it's really been, but I'd be curious to know. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #3)
Probably more like an inflatable life-sized Jillian Barberie doll on the bed, in the same bikini she wears in the NutriSystem commercial. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #83)
Ah Lou, don't let the virtual phages on here get you down. Are we getting too old to enjoy an occasional dustup? Go over to Lackluster Video and rent "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Victor McLaghlan. Observe the epic twenty minute long fistfight between the two of them on the village common that closes the film. It will renew your spirit for the trials ahead. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #62)
There's a lot of truth to that. None of these teams are playing as if they want it. However, if either the Mets or Phillies (or both) get hot, the Marlins won't be able to keep up. They have good starting pitching but their bullpen is erratic, their fundamentals are...uh...well, suspect, their clutch hitting has become just about nonexistent and their defense is poor enough to be the losing difference in too many close games they would have to win, and they have perhaps the worst manager in the major leagues. Worse, they seem to be playing without any fire at the moment. If the Phillies and Mets beat each other up badly enough, the Fish might squeak by, but at this point I wouldn't bet on it. As the three contending teams are playing now, I suspect that the one with the best of the slightly better than .500 records will make it as far as the first round of the playoffs, but probably not much further. As for the Yankees, forget it. They've had too many injuries and weren't a better team than Boston to begin with. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that half of their veterans were osteoporotic at this point. Tampa has been a great story but they now have their hands full with Crawford and Longoria both KO'd for the duration. Even with Lowell on the 15-day DL, I have to like Boston in the AL East. He'll probably be back by early September for the stretch run, Bay has been a great addition to the team and Big Papi seems finally to be hitting his stride. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #60)
Allan B: tell you what, I'll adjust my attitude. Try this: Hey, did you see that terrific swing Josh Willingham put on that ball he grounded to third in the eighth inning? So what if it led to a rally-killing double play? It was a really great swing! And how about that throw into home plate? Well, maybe it did let the runners advance, but did you see how high it went? I mean, why are we paying Richard Branson a hundred grand to ride into space when Josh can throw a ball up there by himself? And how about that Fredi Gonzalez? You have to admire a guy who sticks with his players no matter how badly they're doing. I mean, he must have known that Josh would put that great swing on the ball and drive it to third like a pro. I think he must have been sitting there with Davey Johnson's old laptop with those extra ROMs full of stats, calculating the odds against Josh striking out yet again. Aw, he knew Josh would make contact, and Josh didn't let him down! Rocky: so let me understand this: it's a comment blog, so we're not allowed to comment? It's the lowest paid team in baseball, so we have to forgive their bloopers to the plate that allow runners to move up, constant windmill swings from the heels on pitches way out of the strike zone, absurd baserunning mistakes like the one Uggla made the other night, and managerial blunders like letting a struggling player with a bad back bat in a critical situation ? Yes, blowhard, we know they're not getting paid much. It may even be that they're getting paid exactly what they're worth. But - and pay close attention to this thought - they do have a better record than a lot of teams who get paid a lot more, and teams with huge payrolls have finished in the cellar. Which is a roundabout way of saying that if you attribute their play on the field to their payroll, you really have inflated cojones to come on here and accusing others of not knowing the game - especially when you've offered nothing but vapid insults and no analytical thoughts about the game yourself. Now, here's another radical thought for you: because we're fans, and we care about this team, we want to see them do b-e-t-t-e-r. It's a challenging concept, but perhaps you can assimilate it if given enough time. And to that hayseed nitwit up in the boonies: yep, I pay to go to the games because they're fun. I'm a real fan who supports his team materially, unlike a lot of the gasbags - yourself included - who come on here and expectorate gibberish and gratuitous insults instead of contributing any insights into what's going on on the field that can be kicked around and debated. I frankly have no idea why people like you even bother seeking out a blog from an out of town paper just to come in here and **** on the floor. Hell, my dog can do that - except that, unlike you, he's trained not to. (Thursday Aug 14 | post #49)
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