Eternal Phillies/Marlins Dinner Party

In these unprecedented times, the author of this woebegone blog decided to write about all seven Phillies-Marlins games over five misery-inducing days in this rundown Republic.

Game 1: August 10, 2020

The Miami Marlins are not a path to long-term happiness. Since their inception, they have been run by greedy billionaires who constantly tear apart great teams in search of “financial stability”. Even with two unlikely World Series titles, they are still widely regarded as one of the least-liked teams in baseball, both by its own fans and their competitors. This vitriol was on full display earlier in the season when the Marlins players were struck by a COVID-19 outbreak. Even though this could’ve happened to any of the teams given the utter shambles of the disease response in the country (and, in fact, it has happened to several teams since), everybody started piling on the Marlins and the state of Florida for their ignorance, ineptitude, and apparent disregard for the norms of common sense. When the Philadelphia Phillies suffered their own outbreak, likely due to playing the Marlins, there was even more online rage. The upshot of all this is that the Phillies and Marlins must now make up seven games in five days, putting together MLB’s first seven-game series since…well no one knows.

Once you take the absurdity of playing this MLB season out of the way, you are left with some very strange and bizarre examples of the pointlessness of existence. Let’s start with last night, in which the Marlins lost 29-9 to the Atlanta Braves. The Braves, understandably annoyed with the Marlins for constantly hitting their best player for the high crime of being good at baseball, showed absolutely no mercy. In another example of how idiotic our norms and values seem during extreme circumstances, Braves pitcher Bryse Wilson earned a “save” despite coming in with a 22-8 lead that soon expanded to 29-9. Congrats to Bryse Wilson.

Fresh off their 29-9 loss, the Marlins are still hosting the Phillies with a potential playoff spot on the line. The Marlins, Phillies, and Mets are all fighting for second place in the NL East or one of the two NL Wild Card spots after the league unilaterally decided to change the playoff format on Opening Day like some jerkwad fantasy football commissioner. Thus, these games are “meaningful”, despite being held with no fans in the midst of the worst worldwide natural disaster in a century in the country.

The game begins with a ground out, infield single, balk, walk, passed ball, ground out. Good stuff. In the bottom of the inning, Jake Arrieta immediately gives up a run. Good.

The Marlins television broadcast is extremely bad. The commentators are obvious homers and have very little experience outside of being a PR firm for the team. This is the same team that fired their previous broadcasters because they were too critical of the organization, which is the type of dystopian nonsense you only see at most American startups. The Phillies jumped out to a 3-1 lead after a few BABIP-driven hits in the second, but Arrieta gave up another run in the bottom of the inning.

I figure just giving a gamer of what happened would be boring. You can go watch the highlights or look up the box score. A bunch of things happened, including a J.T. Realmuto revenge homer (he’s so good), but the most important part of the game itself came in the bottom of the eighth when the Phillies bullpen did their thing. The Phillies bullpen is the worst in baseball by ERA, holding an astonishingly bad 7.24 ERA heading into tonight. That increased when Tommy Hunter allowed the Marlins to load the bases and “closer” Brandon Workman subsequently gave up a bases-clearing double to Starling Marte. Many sources are telling me that’s not good.

The Marlins won the game in the bottom of the ninth. Yikes.

Game 2: August 11, 2020

Just going to go ahead and say the Phillies won 11-0 in the first game of a seven-inning doubleheader. I never know what to make of Aaron Nola, who has the Cole Hamels ability to be good but also not really get much respect outside of Philadelphia. He threw a complete game shutout and the Marlins gave up another 11 runs. It was a very dull baseball game.

Here are some non-baseball thoughts:

• With the American West on fire, it might be useful to take an entire industry and just devote it entirely to finding practical ways to fight climate change over the next 50 years. I have a few in mind.

• Thinking about Novak Djokovic hitting a line judge in the throat.

• Capitalism may assert that right to determining all meaning, but meaning is not always derived from capitalism.

Game 3: August 11, 2020

I want robot umps. That’s a total non sequitur, but I’m so tired of seeing horrendous calls change games.

Anyway, these seven-inning doubleheaders are somewhat interesting, and I wonder if they will become more frequent as the years go on and baseball’s rather insane 162-game schedule starts to implode on itself. I’m sure this would have many implications for purists, but I rather enjoy the seven-inning doubleheader as it gives pitchers a chance to finish more games. It also allows for miserable bullpen games though, and that’s what we got on Friday night.

These days in fantasy baseball, it’s impossible to get saves. The stat is already rather stupid to begin with, but we are now at a point where saves are distributed more equitably across relievers that at any point in baseball history. Now, I love a good distribution of value, but it makes fantasy baseball save prospecting almost impossible. These days, you have situations where they decide “oh, I’m not going to use my closer” because managers have figured out that getting through the difficult part of the order earlier in the game is often more valuable. Thus Brandon Kintzler, the “closer”, came in for the sixth inning against the Phillies and robbed me of a save. Ex-Dodger Yimi Garcia came in for the actual save and gave up a run. Don Mattingly later said that Kintzler had a fingernail issue and couldn’t pitch the ninth. Okay, whatever lets you go to bed at night, Don.

The weird thing about these games is that the Marlins are bad. They are reaping every single benefit of the COVID season (first by infecting their opponents, next by skimming off their farm system in the new taxi squad/alternate site and just shuttling relievers that they have options for). Now they have Starling Marte, Brian Anderson, Jesus Aguilar, and a few other good hitters, and they’re quite likely to make the playoffs despite being the worst team in the NL on talent at the beginning of the year. They’ve also gotten extremely lucky. I’ll give a report on their run differential at the end of this post series.

Anyway, the Marlins won 5-3. Miguel Rojas, noted Marlins pandemic czar, has a .989 OPS.

Also, I forgot that he came up with the Dodgers and was traded in 2014…”to the Miami Marlins, along with Dee Gordon and Dan Haren, in exchange for Andrew Heaney, Chris Hatcher, Austin Barnes, and Enrique "Kiké" Hernández.” This was an awful trade for the Marlins (although Heaney was traded to the Angels five hours later, so that at least didn’t help the Dodgers)!!!

Game 4: Saturday, August 12

In the rapidly dying neon-powered advertising slogan running on the backs of private equity-backed misery that is the American Empire, the only salvation is watching Jose Ureña get repeatedly shelled. He gave up a grand slam to Didi Gregorius in the first inning, and it was great. The Marlins lost 12-6 due to some more terrible pitching.

I would estimate that 20% of all human conversations that have occurred since March 2020 have been about the pandemic in some way. The same goes for baseball broadcasts.

Here’s a poem about Matt Joyce.

Matt Joyce was once a legitimate prospect
The Rays had faith in him
and he delivered (before failing with the Angels and then recovering with the Pirates)
yet he is one of the most boring MLB players
I have ever seen (statistically, emotionally, and aesthetically)
for this, he has made $26 million in 13 years
which is just $1 million short of
$27 million — the nominal GDP of the nation of Tuvalu in 2008, his rookie year
in fact, in 2019, if the entire GDP of Tuvalu was collected together
all the hopes and dreams of businesses of the entire country of 11,192 people
they could afford
one year of Chris Davis and Jordan Zimmermann
and have enough to spare to sign Matt Joyce as well

Game 5: Sunday, August 13

If this were a seven game series, we’d be deadlocked at 2-2 going into Game 5. Thankfully, the Phillies and the Marlins will likely not be meeting each other in the NLCS, so we don’t need to watch this for much longer. It feels weird to think that, somewhere, somehow, multiple people are going to die because sports were played this year. While this is something that does happen due to car accidents and health issues and random externalities, it’s crazy to think that there will be increased deaths above average because the public really needed to watch sports. This speaks to the level at which entertainment is needed in modern American society, but it also speaks to how poorly humans judge risk, because we should probably have figured out whether this is worth it or not before we started, not 25 years after the fact.

Anyhow, the Marlins are pitching Sixto Sanchez, the main prospect they got after trading J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies. Many people panned the trade at the time. It’s worked out well for Philadelphia—Realmuto is the best hitting catcher in the game and the engine behind the Phillies’ playoff run. However, they still need to extend him, and meanwhile the Marlins have Sixto Sanchez, who looks really freaking good. He shut down the Phillies over a seven-inning complete game to earn the win.

But honestly, who cares if the trade was “worth” it or not? It’s a meaningless debate. The Marlins did the trade because they were unwilling to spend money to extend Christian Yelich, Realmuto, and others. Acting like the “return” was “worth” it is cover for the bargain bin ownership group, in the end, and it provides cover for billionaires for no reason whatsoever.

Anyway yes, 2-1 Marlins.

Game 6: Sunday, August 13

Nothing is real! Nothing is real! Nothing is real! Nothing is real! Marlins 8, Phillies 1! Some guy named Chad Wallach hit a homer. CHAD. WALLACH. Life is fake. Life is fake. All is worthless. All is worthless.

Game 7: Monday, August 14

Let’s talk about baseball. As a philosophical construct—just kidding I ain’t doing that today—baseball is a strange and nonsensical game. For example, Miguel Rojas, career utility infielder with a .677 career OPS, is now having his best season ever despite catching COVID and having all the stresses of this season. He still only has one (1) barrel on Statcast (a stat that measures A+++ contact). And yet, he’s hitting well enough to have a .471 xSLG. Great.

He homered again on Sunday, one of 6 runs that the Marlins scored. With a commanding 5-2 win in the series, the Marlins have now likely sealed a spot in the 2020 playoffs, something they weren’t even trying to do at the start of the year. Of course, the Marlins have never lost a playoff series, so that will be tested in the 4/5 or 3/6 matchup that happens. And you know what? They could probably win the World Series. And you know what? It won’t matter to the society or the happiness of humanity in the slightest because they have like two fans.

I hate the Phillies, and their inability to beat the Marlins here is a classic reason why you should hate the Phillies. Not only are they annoying and insufferable, they are also not competent enough to do much of anything useful.

Last notes: Pablo Lopez and Jesus Aguilar seem good. Scott Kingery seems bad. Alec Bohm looks like a good player. Adam Morgan should move to Adams Morgan if he ever plays for the Washington Nationals.

We’re done here.