Analytics helped find key gems on playoff journey
The Marlins’ analytics department helped the club find quality players to fill their depleted roster after the COVID-19 outbreak.
Richard Bleier got the opportunity to live out a lifelong dream and play for his hometown team. James Hoyt’s roller coaster of a professional baseball career got new life that resulted in his best season yet. Brandon Leibrandt went from essentially playing showcase games in a two-team independent baseball league after being cut by the Philadelphia Phillies to making his major-league debut.
The trio served as lesserknown success stories on a Miami Marlins team that was nothing short of a success story as a whole after reaching the playoffs for the first time in 17 years and advancing to the National
League Division Series. They were initially replacements while 18 members of the team’s Opening Day roster were sidelined after testing positive for COVID-19 and then held onto their spots as the 60-game season progressed.
How they appeared on the Marlins’ radar in the first place takes a little explaining. It starts with a seven-man team and a spreadsheet.
The Marlins’ baseball analytics department was more or less built from the ground up once the new ownership group led by Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter
took over in October 2017.
The group, led by coordinator Myles Lewis, created a database that serves as a centralized location for all of the club’s scouting reports. These reports include live feedback from scouts as well as insight from those inside the analytics department that include potential player trajectories. This database helps with making a slew of roster decisions, including trades and freeagent pickups.
“I don’t know where we’d be without it,” said Dan Greenlee, the Marlins’ director of player personnel. Greenlee oversees the analytics department and assists the baseball operations department with roster management and player acquisition decisions. “It’s organized in a way that information is as reliable as it has ever been.”
FILLING A ROSTER
This, in essence, was how the Marlins were prepared to make a slew of roster moves when they had 18 roster spots to fill within a span of a week.
To start, 11 were inhouse replacements, players the team already had at their alternate training site in Jupiter.
But six relief pitchers and infielder Logan Forsythe came from outside the organization. There were two familiar faces in Josh D. Smith and Brian Moran, both of whom were on the active roster late last season, but Marlins manager Don Mattingly said at the time that he did not meet most of the new acquisitions in person until he either saw them during pregame warmups or was handing them the ball as they entered the game.
And, remember, this was just the first wave of a roster upheaval. Injuries, poor performance and mainstays returning from COVID-19, caused players, primarily relief pitchers, to rotate on and off the roster. Miami used 61 players during the season. Eleven were not with the team in spring training or part of the initial 60-player roster pool when practices resumed in June.
“To have all that housed in the same place … it allows to you to issue opinions and ultimately make decisions in real time very efficiently,” Greenlee said. “That’s exactly what we needed to do this year.”
THE STANDOUTS FROM THE REPLACEMENTS
Most of the nearly dozen external replacements proved to be temporary fill-ins. Others had injuries limit their opportunity before a large enough sample size was formed.
A select few showed they could carve out a full-season role.
Such as Bleier, a 33-yearold left-handed pitcher who is a Davie native and South Plantation High alumnus who the Marlins had been tracking for a couple years. The COVID-19 outbreak gave the Marlins reason to be more aggressive in making a move. They struck a deal with the Baltimore Orioles on Aug. 1, sending shortstop prospect Isaac De Leon to the Orioles for Bleier.
Bleier, who made his MLB debut with the Yankees at age 29, became a bridge player in Miami’s bullpen, primarily pitching in the seventh inning or in matchup situations to get Miami out of jams. He bounced back from a rough 2019 season (5.37 ERA, .295 batting average against in 55 2⁄3 innings) to produce a 2.63 ERA and a staggering 72.5 percent groundball rate (MLB average is 45.3 percent) in 19 relief appearances for Miami.
“We always saw him as a potentially underrated player for what he can provide for a team,” Greenlee said. “He’s extremely tough on lefthanded hitters. He’s an extreme groundball profile with command. We always liked him, and he’s gotten some huge outs for us.”
Such as Hoyt. The Marlins acquired the 34-year-old from the Cleveland Indians for cash considerations. Like Bleier, Hoyt was a late bloomer. He made his MLB debut at age 29 and spent a fair amount of time in independent ball and the Venezuela Winter League to prepare for his opportunity.
One of his most successful big-league seasons was in 2020. He posted a 1.23 ERA through 14 2⁄3 innings that spanned 24 appearances. Twenty of his 44 outs in the regular season were strikeouts.
He used his slider 67.2 percent of the time, which is the highest breaking ball percentage for any Marlins player with at least 100 pitches thrown in a season, according to Statcast. All 20 of his strikeouts came on the pitch.
“James Hoyt’s slider, we liked,” Greenlee said, “but I’d be lying to if I said any of us thought it would be performing as one of the best sliders in Major League Baseball a monthplus later. He’s been great.”
Such as Leibrandt. The Marlins signed the 27-year-old and son of one-time World Series champion Charlie Leibrandt to serve as a longrelief pitcher. He was built up as a starter for five years in the Phillies organization before Tommy John surgery in July 2018 derailed his trajectory to the majors. He was sidelined for all of 2019 and cut in May 2020.
On a whim, Leibrandt decided to try his luck in the Somerset Professional Baseball Series, one of the few realms of independent baseball that was still going on during the coronavirus pandemic. Leibrandt posted a 0.75 ERA through three starts, striking out 15 batters and walking five over 12 innings.
The Marlins noticed and gave him a chance. The lefty threw four scoreless innings in mop-up duty during his debut on Aug. 23 and ultimately posted a 2.00 ERA in nine innings over five appearances before suffering a seasonending left elbow injury.
“It was definitely trying,” Leibrandt said. “It was definitely, ‘Where do we go next? What can we do to get seen with the whole pandemic going on and really no baseball?’… I just wanted to play some baseball again.”