Miami Marlins will balance youth with potential when it comes to starting rotation
With the Miami Marlins set to begin spring training practices on Feb. 18, it’s time to start evaluating who the Marlins will have in camp. In the final part of a five-part series, we break down the Marlins’ starting pitchers.
If a youth movement is evident at any spot on the Marlins’ roster, it’s with their starting pitchers.
None of Miami’s top eight starters — the five who will likely be penciled into the rotation on Opening Day and the top four reserves — is older than 25 years old.The Marlins are the only team in baseball set to field a starting rotation completely of players who were born no earlier than 1995.
“We could very conceivably head into Jupiter with just young starting pitching,” Marlins general manager Kim Ng said. “It’s our strong suit, our forte. We have no problem doing that.”
That, however, can be a double-edged sword. Yes, the Marlins’ young pitchers are loaded with talent. The group very well could end up becoming one of the best in baseball.
But inexperience is still inexperience. Only one pitcher on the Marlins’ 40-man roster has gone through an entire 162-game season. Add in the fact that no one threw more than 62 2/3 innings during the shortened 2020 season and the risk for injury is heightened as teams stretch back out to the full regular-season slate in 2021.
“There was a lot of lost time from a standpoint of a lot of players didn’t get their innings,” Marlins pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. said this week on the Marlins’ in-house “Hot Stove Show.” “With as young as we are, we have innings projections, and we try to stay true to those the best we can and don’t jeopardize health.”
The workhorse
Sandy Alcantara, now and for the foreseeable future, is the Marlins’ workhorse of the rotation. He’s the only pitcher to go a full season from start to finish, making all 32 scheduled starts in 2019. He has thrown at least six innings in 25 of his 39 starts during the past two years and is poised to be the club’s Opening Day starter for a second consecutive season.
His fastballs — a sinker and a four-seam fastball — both average above 96 mph and headline a five-pitch mix that also includes a low-90s changeup, a mid-80s slider and a low-80s curveball.
The semi-veterans
The next most proven commodities are Pablo Lopez and Elieser Hernandez, a duo that both had breakout years in the shortened 2020 season.
Lopez became Miami’s de facto ace the first half of the season after three starters were sidelined due to COVID-19. He responded by putting up a career-best 3.61 ERA and having personal-best marks in strikeouts per nine innings (9.26) and home runs allowed per nine inning (0.63) while limiting opponents to a .230 batting average against.
Hernandez went 1-0 with a 3.16 ERA over six starts before suffering a season-ending right lat strain. His outings were relatively brief — he never threw more than 5 1/3 in a game — but he was effective in each start.
Both, however, come with some reservations heading into 2021. Lopez ended both 2018 and 2019 on the injured list due to right shoulder issues, something that needs to be kept in mind as his workload doubles and potentially triples from what he threw in 2020.
Hernandez has been a tweener for the Marlins, bouncing between the back end of the rotation and a long-relief role out of the bullpen. With so many of the Marlins’ top prospects getting closer to regular roles at the major-league level, how will Miami approach using Hernandez as the season progresses?
The other contenders
The other two spots in the rotation, at least to start the season, seem to boil down to five of the Marlins’ top pitching prospects: Sixto Sanchez, Trevor Rogers, Edward Cabrera, Braxton Garrett and Nick Neidert.
One would assume Sanchez, the club’s top prospect, will win one of the two jobs. He made seven starts in the regular season and another two in the postseason and flashed his otherworldly stuff throughout — a fastball that tops 100 mph, a changeup that hits in the low-90s and is arguably his best pitch, a knack for forcing groundballs (58 percent last season, well above the MLB average of 45.3 percent).
Rogers, a lefty ranked as the team’s No. 6 prospect by Baseball America whose fastball touches 96 mph and has swing-and-miss potential with all three of his main pitches, made seven starts last year and showed promise despite poor base stats (6.11 ERA, .283 batting average against, 1.61 WHIP).
Cabrera, the Marlins’ No. 5 prospect, could rival Sanchez for the Marlins’ top pitching prospect long-term. His fastball also packs some heat, touching 102 mph one time during spring training, and has decent command of his off-speed pitches. He likely would have made his major-league debut last season if not for a minor shoulder injury.
Garrett and Neidert, Nos. 9 and 15 prospects, both made their MLB debuts last year but had limited playing time.
The organizational depth
It should be noted that the Marlins’ pitching depth extends far beyond these seven. Nine others rank among the club’s top 30 prospects according to Baseball America: Max Meyer (No. 3), Dax Fulton (No. 12), Kyle Nicolas (No. 17), Jorge Guzman (No. 23), Zach McCambley (No. 23), Evan Fitterer (No. 24), Jordan Holloway (No. 25), Daniel Castano (No. 26) and Jake Eder (No. 29)
This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 11:25 AM.
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