Sussman: Did Marlins give up on Justin Nicolino too early?
From Ely Sussman at Fish Stripes on March 26, 2018, with mention of SABR member Wayne Greiner:
Filling out an MLB roster requires collaboration from both the coaching staff and front office. However, Marlins manager Don Mattingly has one of the loudest voices in the room, and throughout spring training, he never shied away from expressing his displeasure with left-hander Justin Nicolino.
At the beginning of organized team activities, Mattingly offered this blunt assessment of the 26-year-old, according to the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson:
“Nico’s a guy, we’ll see what he looks like. We kind of already know.”
Fast-forward to March 7, he commented on the adjustments that Nicolino had made to his pitch selection (via the Sun Sentinel).
“We’ve never been a fan of the cutter,” Mattingly said. “Cutter seemed like when he maybe sticks with that, he got hit hard. You can’t force a guy to do anything, but we’ve been talking about trying to get rid of that cutter for two years now.”
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But Fish Stripes recently spoke with somebody who would happily buy up all the Justin Nicolino stock right now: Wayne Grenier, president of Grenier Agencies Inc.
Three years ago, Greiner’s son, Jarvis, and Dr. Jason Wilson introduced Quality of Pitch at the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics Conference in Phoenix. The following year, they met directly with MLB teams to seek cross-validation, as Wilson explained at The Hardball Times. Since then, Greiner has made Quality of Pitch (QOP) data available for public queries. And because it uses the PITCHf/x database, we can analyze millions of major league pitches thrown by thousands of different players since the 2008 season.
Read the full article here: https://www.fishstripes.com/2018/3/26/17015636/marlins-justin-nicolino-former-prospect-quality-of-pitch-breakout-candidate
Originally published: March 27, 2018. Last Updated: March 27, 2018.