The Marlins Are Chasing (History)

The Dodgers played their last game in Brooklyn on September 24, 1957. They won 2-0 behind rookie Danny McDevitt, who scattered five hits and didn't allow the Pirates to get a runner past second base. They would end the season on the road, never to return. Five days after their season ended, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in human history. As the Braves and Yankees were in the middle of a thrilling seven-game World Series, the 23-inch sphere broadcast the sounds of the world until its batteries died three weeks later, so alarming the public in this country that the government founded NASA. and began a 12-year run to put American boots on the moon. Among other things, the Apollo astronauts studied to become geologists so they could see and bring home samples that would teach us more about the history and formation of both the moon and the earth. They also installed light panels for laser testing which revealed that the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of 3.8 centimeters per year.

In 1918, before they were in Los Angeles or even officially called the Dodgers, the Brooklyn Robins got just 212 walks in 126 games for a 4.6% walk rate. Shortstop Ollie O'Mara managed just seven walks in 450 plate appearances. Since the start of the modern era in 1903, that team's 67 BB%+ is the lowest in AL/NL history. Only one team, the 1957 Kansas City Athletics, finished the season below 70. Like the Dodgers, the Athletics will drift from Kansas City. Like the moon, they would keep drifting.

The Marlins are running at a 5.7% walk rate, the worst in baseball this year. Their 67 BB%+ also ranks them second-lowest since 1903, right between those Dodgers and Athletics teams. When I first wrote this article, they were quite down, but with unusual self-control, they took a full trip on Monday. It was their 27th game of the season with at least three walks. Every other team in baseball has had at least 40 such games. The Marlins have traveled 18 different times. That's twice as many zero-walk games as 28 of the other 29 teams. In all, the Marlins walked 164 times in 79 games. Since 1901, only 22 teams have gone slow in their first 79 games. Each of these teams played more than a century ago.

The reason Miami can't make a run, at least in a baseball sense, is very simple. Since Sports Info Solutions began tracking these things in 2002, the 2024 Marlins trail only the 2019 Tigers as the team's all-time hitting streak. (Once again, they were first when I published this article, and I take their ever-improving patience personally.) SIS has those Tigers at 34.3% and this year's Marlins at 34.0%, while Statcast has the two. at 35% and 34.4%, respectively. In all likelihood, the Marlins will spend the rest of the season locked in a bullpen bullpen with that 2019 Detroit team.

The funny thing is if you head over to the plate discipline leaderboard and sort by O-Swing%, you won't find any Marlins at the top until you start lowering the number of plate appearances needed to qualify. Even if you go down to 100 PAs, you'll see that Nick Gordon is the only Marlin in the top 10, and he ranks seventh on the team in PAs. In other words, they are not at the top because they have few players who break the curve. They are at the top because their lineup is filled from trunk to trunk with players who have absolutely no morals at the plate. This year, the league as a whole has a 28.2% rushing rate. Of the 20 different players who have come to the plate for Miami, 17 have a strikeout rate of over 28.2%. Nine of them are over 36% and four of them are over 40%. If you put the 2024 Marlins through the Stanford marshmallow test, you won't even get a chance to set the marshmallow down on the table. They would spit it on the ground and part of your arm, then check if they could eat the table too.

Three Marlins with a below average rushing average – Dane Myers, Tristan Gray, and Xavier Edwards – combined for 82 of Miami's 2,869 total plate appearances. In other words, this season Miami has sent a guy with a below average rushing rate to the plate more than 97% of the time. That is one way to challenge the record.

In 2023, the Marlins had the 10th highest run rate in baseball. How did they get from there to here? If you look at the moves they made during the offseason, you might honestly think their goal was to break this record. They lost Jorge Soler, Jacob Stallings, and Yuli Gurriel in free agency, undrafted Garrett Hampson, and traded for Jon Berti. If you rank the 2023 Marlins by walk rate, those players took five of the top seven spots. That means 40% of the group's trip is gone.

To replace them, the Marlins added Christian Bethancourt's 3.7% walk rate, Tim Anderson's 3.8% walk rate, Gordon's 4.3%, Vidal Bruján's 6.3%, and Emmanuel Rivera's -7.2%. If you organize our career plate leaderboard by rushing rate, Bethancourt ranks fourth among all professional players, consistently. Anderson placed 24th (Avisaíl García, who was already in the team, placed 18th). It's like the Marlins were trying to recreate the Recreate Him in the Aggregate scene from Ball of moneybut the One they were talking about was a cat chasing a laser pointer.

However, those moves alone would not be enough to put the team in contention for the record. Whether it was coincidence or because playing in Miami does something to your pitch recognition ability, several Marlins put up some of the worst career numbers. Jake Burger and García use the lowest travel rates at work. Gordon, Rivera, and Bethancourt (who was recently DFA'd) are running at high career rushing rates. Josh Bell, Jesús Sánchez, and Nick Fortes posted career-worst numbers in both categories. It might sound like I've cherry-picked here. After all, if you choose any two categories, you can expect almost every team to have a few players who are running a high or low job in one or the other. But I haven't done any cherry picking. Bruján, whose 29.1% rushing rate will be 42 percent if he has enough PAs to qualify, is the only player with a career-best rushing rate in any category. Those other eight players have taken just over half of the team's PAs this season, with Anderson, Chisholm, and De La Cruz being the regulars.

During the playoffs, the team promoted John Mabry from assistant hitting coach to hitting coach. During his 14-year career, Mabry posted a 7.3% walk rate, giving him a BB%+ of 84. During the last five years of his career, the only part for which we have high-level data, he ran a rushing rate of 21.3%, close to the league average. From 2013 to 2018, when Mabry was the Cardinals' assistant hitting coach, the team posted an 8.4% walk rate, which is exactly the same as the league average. Their 27.7% rushing rate was well below the league average, falling all the way down to 21st. From 2020 to 2022, the years Mabry filled the same role in Kansas City, the Royals posted the second-lowest walk rate in the majors at 7.4%, and the sixth-highest strikeout rate at 30.2%. In other words, Mabry wasn't exactly patient in his playing days or his coaching days, but it would be very unfair to pin all of this on him. The worst thing I can say about him is that when I was researching this topic, I went looking for stories and quotes about group behavior, and I couldn't find anything. If the Marlins are worried about their inability to stop swinging in the slop zone, keep it to themselves, though I think they're less concerned about their walk rate than the fact that their 78 wRC+ ranks 29th in baseball.

If this team has an avatar, it should be Gordon. Not only is he the most aggressive hitter for Miami, but he is having a really impressive season. Gordon entered the year with a career rushing percentage of 38.7%, but he's in a whole new galaxy this season. He currently sports a 44.8% rushing rate, which is why his Statcast slider looks like this:

Gordon's 3.5% walk rate is, surprisingly, an improvement over 2023, when he averaged 1.1% over 93 PAs. If you search for Plate X – the horizontal area of ​​the pitch – you'll find that for about 80% of players, their average swing comes from within one inch of the center of home plate. But Gordon just can't give up the outfield. The average distance to left plate is -.21 feet from the center of home plate. I know that sounds small; it is only 2.52 inches. But that's closer to the right-handed batter's box than any baseball player. In fact, it's so far from the third base side that even if you drop the PA requirement, Gordon still ranks 11th, even though he's seen nearly as many pitches as the 10 players ahead of him combined.

As you may have heard, Gordon doesn't believe the moon is real. No, I'm not kidding. Nick Gordon doesn't believe the moon is real. Why does he not believe in the moon? Gordon is more than happy to explain. “The moon is very close, brother,” he told reporters. “It's very close.” This is where it all starts to make sense. Yes Gordon thinks the moon is very close. He makes a living by ignoring places that are more remote than he thinks they are. Perhaps you will take comfort in knowing that the moon, like a change that cannot be resisted, keeps moving away.

But to put all of this on Gordon or any one player would be an understatement for the program the Marlins have assembled. They are united in the same subject, and have been wildly successful regardless of how you sell the numbers. They lead the league in runs scored by both righties and lefties, home and away, with the bases empty and runners in scoring position. They mostly chase sinkers, cutters, changeups, splitters, sliders, and curveballs. Only 15 teams have seen the knuckleball this season, but the Marlins lead them in rushing. If you'd like to break things down with Statcast's attack zones, they swing best against shadow pitches, the chase zone, and the drop zone. The only place where they are not in the first place? The heart of the plate.