Marlins and Plate Discipline

[TheBigLebowski]

I was able to watch 3 out of the 4 games of the Fla series and, I gotta say - I came away from those games thoroughly impressed with the way those guys hit. An average upscale restaurant has a higher payroll than these guys - other than Hanley Ramirez, they're made up of a bunch of journeymen and AAAA farmboys. Heck, we gave them Cody Ross and Jorge Cantu for a couple of Happy Meals and some free movie tickets. Brett Carroll? John Baker?? Shoot - Dan Uggla didn't even make it to the bigs until he was 27.

And yet, look at our lineup. Highly-touted guys like Bruce, Votto and Phillips....veterans like Hernandez and Rolen and other dudes with talent like Stubbs and Dickerson. The ONLY guy we have producing anything consistent at the plate is Rolen. From a talent perspective - talent and reputation - our lineup trumps theirs. But, those guys have an approach at the plate, as well as plate discipline, and we have none. Coaching.

Many people here have been running Aaron Harang up the flagpole last night because of the amount of runs he gave up. If you watched that game with a critical eye, you'd see Aaron actually threw the ball really well. A lot of their base hits were off really good pitches. Conversely, how many 2 strike fastballs did our guys just stare at? Fastballs literally right down the pipe!

At some point you have to acknowledge that these guys are professionals and they have to take responsibility for their failings, but pro baseball teams have coaches for a reason and the Reds are obviously not getting what they need from Brook Jacoby.

[BigRed75]

Wow...well said! I thought the exact samething as I watched the games. Rarely did you see the Marlins swing at the first pitch, chase balls outside of the strikezone or overswing. I saw them force the Reds to throw strikes and also try to shoot the ball the other direction. As you stated, the Reds "talent" far exceeds that of the Marlins players but it sure didn't look that way.

[TheBigLebowski]

Wow...well said! I thought the exact samething as I watched the games. Rarely did you see the Marlins swing at the first pitch, chase balls outside of the strikezone or overswing. I saw them force the Reds to throw strikes and also try to shoot the ball the other direction. As you stated, the Reds "talent" far exceeds that of the Marlins players but it sure didn't look that way.

Which Fish batter was it last night...I think it was the 3rd inning or so....Harang worked a two strike count on him then threw a biting slider on the outside corner and the guy just threw his bat out there and blooped it into left? I want to say it was Uggla but I'm not sure.

That pitch gets thrown to one of our guys and it's strike 3.

[BigRed75]

I didn't watch the game last night (thank goodness). They did a great job (maybe not Maybin but he's obviously young) just getting the bat on the ball. Kind of interesting since they lead the league in Ks.

[Kingspoint]

Didn't we split a "road series" with them this week?

[ochoa30]

Didn't we split a "road series" with them this week?

Yes and we were extremely fortunate to do that. Everything said in this thread is correct. They had a gameplan vs. Our pitchers. It was blatantly obvious to see. Every hitter on the reds seems to go up there with a hope you get a hanger and crush it philosopy. Almost every marlin had an opposite field hit an that series. They aren't better hitters, they were clearly just better prepared.

[Vottomatic]

The Reds could fire Dusty, and hire Rick Sweet, and I truly believe the results would be the same or better.

[MrMcConnell]

If you ask Marlins fans, they'll disagree with you. They hate how their guys are always swinging for the fences.

The Marlins and Reds are almost identical in the BB/K department as a team.
The Marlins have a .329 OBP to the Reds .310.
The Marlins have scored 1 more run this year than the Reds in the same amount of games.

The Marlins aren't really doing much better than the Reds in anything. . . at least nothing that sticks out statistically. I don't really think the Marlins' lineup is drastically better than the Reds's lineup.

The difference is that the Marlins's pitchers are doing better this year with 3/4 of a run difference in ERA thus far.