Young starting pitchers are Marlins’ strength — and are among MLB’s best in this stat
Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly has said it since spring training.
The club’s success, however relative during the second year of a full-blown rebuild, will be defined by its young starting pitching staff.
The season starts and finishes with five players, none older than the age of 27, four of whom were rookies just a year ago.
Through 28 games, those five — Jose Urena, Trevor Richards, Pablo Lopez, Sandy Alcantara and Caleb Smith — have lived up to their manager’s gaudy expectations.
There have been bumps along the way through the first fifth of the season — the occasional growing pains expected of a young staff — but overall, the Marlins’ starting pitching staff has shown the potential of eventually being a staff that contends with MLB’s best down the road.
“You don’t really have to go into the long-range part of it. It’s now,” Mattingly said. “To know that you have that [starting pitching] day-in and day-out, you’re starting to be able to count on it that you feel pretty good about guys’ outings.”
Heading into Monday, the Marlins starting pitchers rank 14th among 30 MLB teams in opponent batting average (.245) and 17th in ERA (4.28).
But take a closer look inside the analytics, and the Marlins’ rotation is actually among the league’s best in one key category: Swing and miss rate.
According to Statcast, the Marlins’ five starters are making batters miss on 27.7 percent of their swings, the sixth-best rate in MLB and third in the National League only to the the Washington Nationals (29.6 percent) and Los Angeles Dodgers (28.1 percent).
The Marlins’ four youngest pitchers — Smith, Richards, Lopez and Alcantara — are all ranked in the top 42 among starting pitchers who have thrown at least 200 pitches.
Smith (33.6 percent) and Richards (33.1 percent) are eighth and ninth, respectively, in that category and comprise one of just two duos from the same team ranked among the top 10. The Nationals’ Max Scherzer (No. 4, 35.3 percent) and Stephen Strasburg (No. 7, 34.1 percent) is the other pair.
While Richards relies primarily on his change-up to get swings-and-misses (41.2 percent whiff rate), Smith is making batters miss with all three of his pitches. It’s a big reason why he is ranks in the top 10 among MLB starters in ERA (seventh, 2.17), strikeouts per nine innings (eighth, 11.48) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (ninth, 5.29).
“He needs to throw strikes because his stuff is that good,” Mattingly said. “... We want him to attack the strike zone.”
Smith added: “Every start, I’m getting a little more comfortable and the deeper I get into games, the more comfortable I get.”
Room to grow
While the stating pitchers have shown considerable progress early in the season, they by no means have reached their ceiling.
Their main problem: Avoiding that one big inning that has the potential to derail an otherwise solid outing on the mound.
It was the first for Smith on Thursday, as a 16-pitch at-bat with J.T. Realmuto that ended in Smith’s favor ultimately cost him an extra inning on the mound.
It was the first for Pablo on Sunday, a 26-pitch frame in which he gave up a full-count walk to Bryce Harper and then a full-count RBI double to Rhys Hoskins with two outs.
It was the second for Trevor Richards on Saturday, a 35-pitch frame in which he gave up four earned runs.
Nine of the 14 earned runs Alcantara has given up came over just two innings — five in one inning against the Phillies on April 12 and four against the Cubs on April 17.
Nine of Urena’s 19 earned runs allowed this year came in two innings over his first two starts of the season.
“There’s going to be hiccups along the way, but you’re starting to see it now,” Mattingly said. “If we’re able to generate runs, we’re in games. It’s not like we’re not in games and we don’t have chances to win. The reason is because those five guys are pretty much going out and keeping us there, giving us a chance to win every night.”
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