Marlins offense hits rock bottom, maybe

The Marlins have hit rock bottom.

Probably.

We hope, anyway.

Anyone that pays even a little attention to baseball knows that the 2019 Miami Marlins weren’t going to be good. They’re only in year two of the rebuild and most of their best prospects are still in the lower levels of the Minor Leagues. Despite that, there’s still reason to be optimistic about the outlook of the Marlins. They have two top 100 prospects, which is a huge upgrade from just a year ago, and they have some other promising prospects that will soon help— Monte Harrison and Zac Gallen.

But for right now, the Major League team is historically bad.

The Marlins were just swept by the Cubs and have fallen to 4-15 on the year. Wednesday’s 6-0 loss was the 5^th time this season that the Marlins have been shut out and it’s the 9^th game that they have scored 1 or less runs. That’s 47% of their games where they have either been shutout or scored one run or less. They’re currently on pace to win 35 games.

The infamous 1962 New York Mets won 40.

Yes, it’s still early. Twenty games isn’t the largest sample for a 162 game season, but when you’re a team that lacks talent in the Major League level and don’t have much reinforcement coming up in the Minors, it’s time to panic.

In hopes to boost their offense, they called up Isaac Galloway, who is a career minor leaguer and has only hit 10 home runs once in his 10 years in the minors.

So, just how bad has the Marlins offense been? Let’s breakdown these numbers.

The Marlins have scored just 48 runs so far this season, which is by far the lowest in the league. The second lowest belongs to the Colorado Rockies who have scored 59.

The 48 runs average to 2.59 runs per game, which is on pace to be the lowest scoring offense in MLB history. The 1981 Blue Jays— who were the worst offense ever, averaged about a half run more.

Here’s the thing though; they can’t score runs because they simply can’t create them. When you don’t have the talent to score runs, you have to try to manufacture or create them. The Marlins can’t do either.  They have the 25^th worse wRC+ (weighted runs created) in baseball and the 27^th worst wOBA (weighted on base average).

One of the biggest reasons for such low numbers in major offensive categories is because of the glaring flaw the Marlins have: every single hitter has a bad approach.

To be noted however, they signed and grew guys who were never on base heavy guys. Now it’s really showing. They currently have the 28^th worse BB% in baseball at 6.9. Brian Anderson has the highest on base percentage on the team at .308 with the league average OBP% at .320, for reference.

As far as other advance stats categories go, the Marlins find themselves in the bottom 5 of almost every one.

In power numbers, they rank 28^th in ISO, 27^th in slugging and 26^th in OPS.

For Marlins fans out there watching these games—and lord knows they are painful to watch— you just have to remember that this is a process and better days are ahead.

(Hopefully.)

Michael (Dutch) Sonbeek is hitting .237 this season on his Twitter takes, which would put him in the upper echelon on the Marlins.