Friday, May 11, 2012

Friday Mets Prospectus: Marlins Preview and Mets 5/11 Historical Records

The Mets head to the Miami tonight, home of the Dali inspired home run instillation for a three game series against the Marlins. Before we get into our preview of this weekend series I would like to thank Metsblog for linking yesterdays article to it's site.

The Marlins are 16 and 19 right now, placed 4th in the NL East. This season they have scored 111 runs and allowed 110. Let's take a look at the pitchers for this series:

Mark Buerhle: Buerhle is consistently ranked baseball's best defensive pitcher and one of baseball's fastest, both make pitching against never a fun task. He is pitching well this year with an ERA/xFIP of 2.83/3.95 over 41.1 IP. He isn't striking out many however with a k/9 of just 4.79%. He is definitely the pitcher who concerns me the most this weekend.

Ricky Nolasco: The oft underrated Nolasco is also having a good year with an  ERA/xFIP of 2.72/3.94 over 39.2 IP. His k/9 currently sits at 4.76. Wow. It's like I just copied the Buehrle section and pasted it here. These guys have eerily similar stats. The big difference is that Nolasco is 4-0 and Buehrle is 2-4, ah the wonderful vagaries of pitcher wins and losses.

Carlos Zambrano: The big Z! Remember last year when he stormed off the field and retired on the spot? That was awesome... Anyway I bet you forgot Big Z was even on the Marlins, well he is and he is pitching pretty darn well with an ERA at a svelte 1.98. He has struck out 32 batters over 41 innings and has been a very useful part of the Marlins rotation. His prolific batting has fallen off however, he has 1 hit for a BA of .83. His lifetime average still sits at a remarkable .238.

The Marlins offense was off to a slow start but is starting to rise to predicted levels. The strongest batsman has been Omar Infante, he of many positions, who is hitting .313/.343/.635. I am pleased as shoo fly pie to report that Jose Reyes is batting a laughable .233 and still has not cracked a positive WAR (he's at -.2).

Finally I got to wondering how this strong Spring start compares to other recent Met Springs so I compiled this table of the Mets standings on May 11 going back 6 years.


Date
Wins
Losses
5/11/2012
18
13
5/11/2011
16
20
5/11/2010
18
15
5/11/2009
17
14
5/11/2008
19
16
5/11/2007
22
12
5/11/2006
22
12

Well it isn't quite as good as those wonderful years of '06 and '07 but it is our best May 11th since 2008 and much better than last year. I think it shows that we still have some work to do and shouldn't get too excited just yet but also shows a marked improvement of this team over some of the recent years.




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