The Marlins are receiving calls for starting pitchers. Why it’s unlikely they’ll be traded
The Miami Marlins — like the rest of Major League Baseball — have seen the monster free-agent deals that have surfaced for starting pitching.
Gerrit Cole: nine years, $324 million with the Yankees.
Stephen Strasburg: seven years, $245 million to re-sign with the Nationals.
Zack Wheeler: five years, $118 million with the Phillies.
Even Tanner Roark has a two-year, $24 million deal in place with the Blue Jays, Cole Hamels $18 million for one year with the Braves and Jordan Lyles $16 million for two years with the Rangers.
It makes the Marlins appreciate the young, controllable starting pitching they have at their disposal.
It also makes them an easy target for other teams interested in trading for that young, controllable starting pitching.
As of Wednesday, the third day of MLB’s annual winter meetings, the Marlins have been contacted by more than half the league regarding the availability of pitchers Sandy Alcantara, Caleb Smith and Pablo Lopez.
“There’s still teams, a lot of teams, that call on our pitching because it’s young, it’s good and it’s affordable,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said. “That’s always the case. If you have good, young, affordable pitching, you’re going to get phone calls. That has nothing to do with the market.”
But make no mistake: It would take a lot — a lot — for the Marlins to even contemplate parting way with any of their quality young members of the rotation.
“It’s a scary thought,” Hill said Wednesday about trading away those pitchers. “It is a scary thought when you think about the market and how difficult it was to acquire the starting pitching that we acquired. It would have to be a piece that we really feel is a big part of the near term and the future for us to part with it. ... You feel comfort knowing that you don’t have to go into that market to get it.”
Indeed, the Marlins have put themselves in good position with their rotation over the first two years of their rebuild under the Bruce Sherman/Derek Jeter ownership group.
Hill is able to rattle off a dozen Marlins pitchers who in any five-person combination could make up the team’s starting rotation during the next two years.
Half of the group — Alcantara, Smith, Lopez, Jordan Yamamoto, Elieser Hernandez and Robert Dugger — pitched in the big leagues at some point and none is older than 24 years old outside of Smith (28).
Alcantara and Smith are most likely the Marlins’ Nos. 1 and 2 starters when the 2020 season begins. Alcantara was Miami’s lone All-Star and the only starting pitcher to make every scheduled start. He posted a 3.88 ERA over 197 1/3 innings in 32 starts. He posted a 2.73 ERA (21 earned runs in 69 1/3 innings) over his final 10 starts of the season. Alcantara struck out 58 batters while walking just 18 in that stretch.
Smith was one of the best starting pitchers in baseball through the first two months of the 2019 season. He compiled a 3.10 ERA, holding opponents to a .189 batting average and striking out 80 batters over 61 innings and at one point had a stretch of six consecutive quality starts, defined as giving up no more than three earned runs while pitching at least six innings.
But a hip injury in early June sidelined Smith for a month, and his production suffered.
Smith’s final 16 games of the season: A 5.36 ERA, 86 strikeouts to 40 walks, a .241 batting average against and 20 home runs allowed over 87 1/3 innings.
The other six — Sixto Sanchez, Edward Cabrera, Nick Neidert, Jorge Guzman, Trevor Rogers and Braxton Garrett — are all among the top 16 prospects in Miami’s minor-league system. Neidert is in Triple A. The other five finished the 2019 season in Double A.
And that list doesn’t include Jose Urena, the Marlins’ Opening Day starter the past two seasons who can still figure into either the rotation or bullpen at some point.
Of that group, only Cabrera, Rogers, Garrett and Urena were part of the organization before the new ownership group took over.
“You’re talking about front-line starting pitching from the Major Leagues all the way down to Double A,” he said.
That’s an enviable position to be in, considering no team finishes the season with the same starting rotation that it had on Opening Day.
Injuries, trades, poor performance result in mixing and matching at points.
The Marlins had 10 pitchers start at least one game last year. After their Opening Day rotation of Urena, Trevor Richards, Lopez, Alcantara and Smith went 64 games without a missed start, three pitchers (Smith, Urena and Lopez) went down in rapid succession.
The club’s 4.59 starting pitching ERA ranked 16th in MLB last year. However, the Marlins’ starters put together a 3.96 ERA heading into the All-Star Break that ranked second in the National League East, fourth in the NL and seventh in MLB.
“You know it’s inevitable something is going to happen in some form or fashion,” Hill said, “and you hope you have the depth in the system to weather it and not take a step back when those things happen.”
This and that
▪ Finding another impact bat in addition to Jonathan Villar and Jesus Aguilar remains the Marlins’ top priority. Free agency is the most likely route for an acquisition to take place. Improving the bullpen follows in the pecking order.
▪ If the Marlins are active in Thursday’s Rule 5 draft, they will most likely be looking for a reliever.
.JPG)