One big, unheralded asset in Marlins’ playoff run, a better Brinson and Yankee influence
A six-pack of Miami Marlins notes on the eve of the start of the best-of-5 playoff series against the Atlanta Braves (Game 1 at 2 p.m. Tuesday, FS-1):
▪ On a team with a handful of unheralded players who are household names mostly in their own households, Chad Wallach might sit atop that list, considering the remarkable job he has done with the Marlins pitching staff.
Consider the numbers:
With Wallach catching, Marlins pitchers have a 2.74 ERA, with 77 strikeouts, 30 walks and 61 hits in 72 ⅓ innings.
With Jorge Alfaro catching, Marlins pitchers have a 4.30 ERA, with 108 strikeouts, 53 walks and 128 hits in 125.2 innings.
No wonder Don Mattingly started Wallach in both games of the Cubs series, even though Alfaro has far more power.
Why is Wallach so good at handling a pitching staff and calling games?
Reliever Richard Bleier puts it this way: “I think he has a great feel for knowing what the starters like to do and knowing the hitters and knowing what the relievers like to do, and implementing that into the game and just overall having a good feel for the flow of the game.”
Wallach is so studious about that, to the point that Bleier noted: “After I pitch, I’ll throw four pitches and we’ll sit there and we’ll talk longer than my outing was about things we were trying to do, things we would have done if different things would have happened. I think that goes a long way in preparation for the next game.
“If it’s just a different hitter, if we’re talking about ‘oh if I did this pitch and he did this and I would have gone here.’ He knows my thought process; he knows everyone else’s thought process.”
When Pablo Lopez is on on the mound, the difference in results is stark depending on who’s catching. Lopez has allowed three earned runs in three starts with Wallach catching, compared with 14 in four starts with Alfaro catching.
And Wallach was the catcher during excellent playoff starts by Alcantara (one run in 6 ⅔ innings) and Sixto Sanchez (no runs in five innings).
Overall, Marlins pitchers have a 2.56 ERA in Wallach’s last 11 starts.
Wallach’s father, Tim, was a longtime big-league third baseman and MLB coach, including for the Marlins. Did Chad study catchers when he attended his dad’s big-league games?
“It’s a tough thing to pick up watching the game,” he said. “It’s more doing the homework, watching the video, talking with Stott [pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr.] getting together with Jorgy [Alfaro] and all of us getting our homework done together and getting on the same page.”
This is Wallach’s second tour with the Marlins. Miami drafted him in the fifth round out of Cal State Fullerton in 2013, then traded him with Anthony DeSclafani to the Cincinnati Reds for Mat Latos in December 2014. He was claimed by the Marlins off waivers in December 2017.
He has hit only .219, with three homers and 14 RBI in 137 at-bats for the Marlins during the past three seasons, including .227 in 44 at-bats this season.
But even though Alfaro has far more power (21 homers in 524 at-bats in two seasons as a Marlin), he hit only .226 this season with three homers. So from a batting average standpoint, the difference between Alfaro and Wallach is negligible.
▪ Acquiring players — and coaches — from the place you previously worked hasn’t worked for every South Florida team. Former Miami Dolphins coach Adam Gase, for example, had little success bringing in several of his former players, including Jay Cutler, Julius Thomas and Josh Sitton.
But it has worked wonderfully for Yankees legends Derek Jeter and Don Mattingly in their acquisition of former Yankees - including first baseman Garrett Cooper and pitcher Caleb Smith - and Jeter’s hiring of a bunch of front office executives who have helped with this turnaround, primarily Gary Denbo and Dan Greenlee.
So is this Yankees South?
“I’ve learned the Yankee system and how we did things,” Mattingly said. “Gary grew up in it. As you do anything, you learn and that becomes how you believe it should be done. It’s not such a bad model, right? We feel like it’s been successful. The Yankees obviously are big-market, big-money club but the fundamentals of doing things right and the way you approach things, there is nothing wrong with that.
“It’s where we grew up. I think it’s a fair [comparison]. I wouldn’t call it Yankee South. I’d call us the Marlins, but there is probably a lot of Yankee flavor in our organization.”
▪ Though Lewis Brinson hit only .226, he batted .260 in 54 plate appearances against left-handers and could get the start in Game 1 against Braves lefty Max Fried. Monte Harrison is also an option.
That Brinson improved from a dismal big-league hitter (.199 and .173 in his first two years with the Marlins) to a useful platoon player suggests the challenges of evaluating hitters too quickly. Brinson had 655 big league at-bats coming into this year before clear improvement happened.
“Brinson has made some true changes,” Mattingly said. “You’ve got to credit [hitting coach Eric Duncan and offensive coordinator James Rowson]... and our hitting department of really finally getting through to him of what he needed to do. I told him the other day, ‘You need to send message to Pags [former Marlins hitting coach Mike Pagliarulo, who held the job until early in the 2019 season]. Pags was telling him over and over and over, ‘You have to get off the back side. And we just couldn’t get through.”
Mattingly meant that Brinson was dropping his back shoulder too much before his swing, causing him to be more off balance and less likely to make contact.
“These guys have been able to get that message across and he’s felt that and understands it,” Mattingly said. “And that’s maybe where it takes all those at-bats to get to the point where you’re starting to feel things that you need up there and have understanding of how the swing actually works. If you are doing things wrong mechanically and you don’t change that, it’s not going to get better. There’s going to be exposure in certain parts of the strike zone.
“To his credit, he stayed with it and our guys have been able to get the message across... and now we’re beginning to see the signs of Lewis becoming the player we think he can be when you make that [Christian Yelich] trade” for Brinson, Harrison, Isan Diaz and Jordan Yamamoto. That deal obviously has worked out poorly for Miami, but there’s still hope it can be salvaged.
▪ Wallach on what he has observed from catching Sanchez (who will start Game 3 against Atlanta) and another top pitching prospect, Trevor Rodgers:
“Anytime you’ve got a guy that throws 100 with sink, it’s pretty special,” Wallach said of Sanchez. “The biggest thing for me is the amount of strikes he throws. He attacks guys. He’s not afraid and he shouldn’t be. You see a lot of young guys that mess around with the zone, but he comes in and throws strikes, which is awesome. And his tempo is pretty good too.”
And “with Trevor, he’s a 6-5, 6-6 left-hander that throws 95. That’s something you’re looking for. He can be as good as any of them.”
▪ One smart thing the Marlins have done, as we explained in this March piece, is implementing an organizational approach for hitting, for the types of athletes the Marlins are looking for, and other areas. That consistency can only help, because everyone will be on the same page. Denbo helped fuel some of those changes.
“Gary was a hitting guy and the people we’ve brought in, James Rowson and Eric Duncan... we have a pretty much united philosophy,” Mattingly said. “I think everything we do now is pretty much united from the bottom up. Hitting wise, there is a united philosophy; there are a lot of ways to do it but there are some absolutes we believe in.
“Gary is very good about bringing good teachers in and [implementing] our beliefs and how we develop young hitters, not just mechanically but game plans and having an understanding of hitting in general. Gary has done a really nice job of that.”
▪ TV notes: FS-1 — which will carry Games 1 and 3, 4 and 5 of Marlins-Braves — assigned Adam Amin, A.J. Pierzynski and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright to the games. It’s hardly unprecedented for an active player such as Wainwright to dabble in broadcasting; NBA stars Draymond Green and Vince Carter have done it and Seattle tight end Greg Olsen is doing it for Fox. Dolphins radio voice Jimmy Cefalo did it while playing many years ago…
MLB Network will use Matt Vasgersian, Jim Kaat and Buck Showalter on its only Marlins telecast, Game 2 on Wednesday. Bob Costas isn’t working MLB Network playoff games this year...
Fox Sports Florida will air a National League Division playoff preview at 7 p.m. on Monday and 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, then will air a live 30-minute pregame show and postgame show around every game.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 4:02 PM.
