The Marlins are not in a good way.
In addition, the video is filled with non-stars like Dan Meyer and John Baker. That's not the worst part though.
Throughout the video you may or may not notice that all of the highlights seem to be from within the teal and orange monstrosity that is Dolphins/Dolphin/Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Land Shark Stadium/Park.
With that in mind, I draw your attention to one quick highlight, around the 1:30 mark in the video, right when Scott tells us for the 47th time to "keep hoping", just after Hanley's jumping-in-the-air catch but just before the Marlins' celebration with #3 Jorge Cantu.
Look closely. You see a sidearmed pitcher, either number 36 or 38 (I'm thinking the former), striking out a hitter.
Nothing seems wrong with that on the surface, though. A Marlin happened to wear #36 or #38 and throw sidearmed. Who cares?
Well, another thing to consider here is that we must assume all of the footage was taken pre-2010, as the video was premiered during the Marlins home opener in 2010. If your guess is that this pitcher was some guy on the Marlins in 2009, *buzzer*. Baseball-Reference does not show the 2009 Marlins ever putting a guy on the field who wore #36 or #38.
But aha! 2008 yields Anibal Sanchez, Marlins starter, wearing number 36! It all makes sense now!
Not so fast. Here are 2 pictures of Anibal Sanchez pitching:
Notice the lack of a sidearm motion. Can't be him in the video.
If we go back to 2007, an interesting possibility comes about. In that season, the Marlins had a man in their employ by the name of Byung-Hyun Kim. Kim wore three numbers that season, #23, #49, and #38, the last of which seemed to be a last-ditch possibility for the number of the mystery thrower in the music video.
Also, here is a picture of Mr. Kim pitching:
Notice the... holy shit he actually throws sidearmed too! It seems perfect. Perhaps too perfect though.
First of all, that still really really looks like #36 on the pitcher's back. Second of all, I call to your attention the uniforms of the players involved in this play. Notice the pristine white uniform of the batter and the grayer uniform of the mystery pitcher.
Recall something I asked you to take notice of earlier in this post: the fact that all of the highlights in the video seem to be from Marlins home games.
The backstop in the freeze frame from video seems to match the backstop in the Marlins' home park (seen here, during a day game). The ads not matching up is to be expected, as they rotate every few seconds within a game and the rotation of ad choices changes often throughout the season and between seasons. In both pictures though, we seem to see a backstop teal aside from the ad space directly behind home plate, with teal directly under the ads. I have major doubts that there are any other Major League teams with teal backstops in their home parks.
Other 36s and 38s throughout Marlins history include Brian Moehler (not a sidearmer), Josias Manzanillo (nope), and Vladimir Nuñez, a reliever for the 2003 World Series-winning Marlins team and donner of #36.
At first glance, he seems to be a potential match. Slightly unusual arm angle, maybe he had it even lower in his Marlin years.
This seems to just be grasping at straws though. I see a far likelier possibility, that being that the mystery pitcher in question was not a Marlin. Teams rarely, if ever, wear their grays at home, or their whites on the road. We've established that the stadium featured in the short highlight is almost certainly the stadium down in Miami. This pitcher doesn't seem to have been a Florida Marlin, he seems to have been an opposing sidearmer shutting down a Florida Marlin batter.
The question still stands, though. Who the hell is this mystery #36?
To narrow it down, I looked at the teams the Marlins faced in 2009. There were twenty of them (every team in the NL, along with the entire AL East during interleague play). Toronto, Boston, and Tampa Bay were out as the Marlins only played away games against them during the 2009 season.
Atlanta presents our first suspect, #36, Boone Logan. Strange arm angle? Check. Confirmed to have struck out at least one Marlin? Check. He may be our best suspect.
How about a short-lived Met: Darren O'Day. #36. True sidearmer. Struck out a Marlin in his all too short Mets stint. He seems like our best guess at this point.
The Nationals' #36, Tyler Clippard, doesn't throw sidearm. Neither does the Mets' other #36, Ken Takahashi. The Phillies didn't have a #36 that season. The Cardinals had #36, Dennys Reyes, but the mystery player isn't decked out in red. Same goes for the Reds' #36 Edinson Volquez, no red numbers on the uniform means no match.
Pittsburgh's #36 was an infielder (Luis Cruz), as was Houston's #36 (Matt Kata). No Brewer donned the number in 2009. Cubs #36 Randy Wells isn't a sidearmer.
To spare you the rest of this monotony, I'll spoil the ending: there's no one else who matches the criteria.
This leaves us with a few options:
1) It's O'Day.
2) It's Logan.
3)The mystery pitcher is actually wearing #38, and is someone on another team I hadn't hypothesized about yet.
4) The footage is from earlier than 2009, and it's either Kim, Nunez, or some other opposing pitcher.
5) I'm misinterpreting something, or making a bad assumption, when in reality all is well and it's just a Marlins pitcher striking a guy out.
Regardless, this one was quite the puzzler. And regardless, "Marlins Will Soar" still absolutely sucks.
So, I was looking at this and I came to two primary conclusions off the bat:
ReplyDelete1: It's not Kim. If you go over the stills, the name is much longer than Kim. It's too wide for the 3-letter surname, so you can eliminate him.
2: Boone Logan is definitely not right handed, so he's out.
But then I looked even more closely and I figured out the flaw in this whole thing and, quite possibly, the answer to our question:
3: We don't know that this is a strikeout.
I went over the clip and we never really see that the ball goes into the mitt, or have any confirmation of a strikeout. We can't assume strikeout. However, we can say with reasonable certainty that this game is being played in Landshark/whatever and that a Marlin is at the plate.
As you said, the best guess at the player at the mound is Darren O'Day. He pitched 4 games as a Met, 2 @Marlins.
And then I looked at the game log for April 10th and I had my eureka moment...
On April 10th, O'Day came into a 4-4 game and faced two batters: Emilio Bonifacio (switch) and Jorge Cantu (right). He walked Bonifacio, and then gave up a walk-off RBI single to Cantu. Not only is that highlight worthy, but in the very next shot Cantu is being approached by teammates looking to celebrate something big, like a walk-off win.
What we can conclude is that the pitch was on the outside corner, about belt high. So I pulled up the brooksbaseball pitch FX data for that AB in question and, well, I think we have our answer:
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php?s_type=3&sp_type=1&batterX=85&month=04&day=10&game=gid_2009_04_10_nynmlb_flomlb_1/&year=2009&pitchSel=503285&prevGame=gid_2009_04_10_nynmlb_flomlb_1/
Second pitch, in-play run, belt high, outside corner of the zone (for an RHB).
I think we have our answer. That highlight is a pitch FROM Darren O'Day to Jorge Cantu, which he pulled into left field for a walk-off single.