‘We pitch our butts off’: Key to the Marlins’ success? Young guns have been lights out
Trevor Rogers’ command started to wane toward the tail end of the best start of his young major-league career.
The Miami Marlins’ 23-year-old lefty gave up a leadoff double in the seventh inning against the Baltimore Orioles and then opened the next three at-bats behind in the count.
After a slider landed in the dirt in his two-out at-bat with Julio Urias, veteran catcher Sandy Leon made his way to the mound to give Rogers a quick pep talk. Miguel Rojas, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Jesus Aguilar quickly joined, as well.
“It was more of just giving me a breather,” Rogers said of the mound visit. “Let me calm down a little bit.”
One pitch later, Rogers got Urias to bite on a changeup, which rolled right to Chisholm for an easy groundout.
Rogers, for the first time in his career, had thrown seven innings on an efficient 82 pitches. He’s the first Marlins pitcher to get that deep into a game this season.
“Definitely one of my better outings,” Rogers said, “if not my best one.”
Exactly what the Marlins need right now.
Rogers’ emergence and continued development was always going to be key for the Marlins as they try to stay competitive in the National League East in 2021.
The importance is magnified with injuries putting the back-end of the Marlins’ starting rotation in flux.
The Marlins know what they have in Sandy Alcantara, a top-of-the-rotation player with the pure stuff and evolving mind-set to potentially be one of the best in MLB.
They know what they have in Pablo Lopez, a steady middle-of-the-rotation pitcher who can regularly give six innings and stay competitive against top lineups, even if the results are shaky from time to time.
They also know a lot of their top-end starting pitching depth isn’t going to be around for a while.
Elieser Hernandez, the Marlins’ only other pitcher not named Alcantara or Lopez with more than 25 starts, has been sidelined since the Marlins’ first series of the season with a right biceps injury. He’s slated to throw his first bullpen session since the injury next week.
Sixto Sanchez, the club’s top pitching prospect who dazzled at times during his MLB debut last season, is dealing with a right shoulder injury and isn’t throwing off a mound yet. Fellow top pitching prospect Edward Cabrera missed all of spring training with nerve inflammation in his right bicep although the team hopes he will pitch in minor-league games this season.
That puts extra pressure on Rogers, the team’s first-round pick in 2017 who had an up-and-down shortened debut season in 2020 but showed a maturity both physically and mentally in spring training.
So far, he has handled what has been thrown his way.
“I don’t think he’s disappointed from what we’ve seen so far these last two weeks,” general manager Kim Ng said. “We look to Trevor to do exactly what he’s been doing.”
Top-end stuff
What exactly has Rogers been been doing to lead to this success?
In simplest terms: He’s throwing strikes and finding himself ranked among the league’s top pitchers four starts into the season.
Heading into Thursday’s games, Rogers ranks 10th among qualified starting pitchers in strikeouts per nine innings pitched (12.68), 12th in ERA (1.64), 14th in batting average against (.161) and tied for 28th in walks and hits allowed per inning pitched (1.00).
Those are the results.
How has he gotten there?
There are physical aspects to consider. According to Statcast, 35.1 percent of Rogers’ pitches this season have been called strikes or swings and misses, which ranks seventh among 67 pitchers who have thrown at least 200 pitches. This shows he has the ability to locate his pitches and be deceptive enough to keep hitters guessing.
He has also added velocity on all three of his pitches. His four-seam fastball, which he throws 61.9 percent of the time, is averaging 94.9 mph after sitting at 93.6 mph in 2020. His slider is averaging 82.2 mph (compared to 81 mph) and his changeup is averaging 86.6 mph (compared to 84.4 mph).
“When you have a guy like that on the mound,” Leon said, “it makes it easy for me to call a game. I can just put my fingers down and know he’s going to execute.”
But then there’s the mental side of Rogers’ game.
He learned from the mistakes that came from his inaugural season in 2020, mistakes that resulted in him going 1-2 with a 6.11 ERA over 28 innings despite promising metrics (primarily a 30 percent strikeout rate and a .195 expected batting average against his fastball compared to the .314 average that opponents actually produced against the pitch).
“This is a guy who really benefited from coming up last year and getting a few starts,” manager Don Mattingly said. “He really learned his lessons, and went to work and made some big strides. He has been very mature about the way he goes about it. And this guy’s stuff is really good.”
The rotation as a whole
Rogers putting all of that together is instrumental for the Marlins’ starting rotation, the position group that is supposed to be the team’s strength.
The good: Marlins starting pitching entered Thursday ranked in the top 10 of the league in ERA (eighth, 3.39), batting average against (sixth, .208) and walk and hits per inning pitched (10th, 1.17). Opponents’ average exit velocity against Marlins starters is just 87.4 mph, the seventh-best mark in MLB.
And Miami is doing this without a single starter older than 26 to this point.
“We pitch our butts off,” Rogers said. “I think we’ve been called the young guns. We can go out and compete with the rest of them.”
But while the results are good, the Marlins need more length out of their rotation. Miami starting pitchers have averaged just 5.16 innings per game so far this season. Alcantara is the only pitcher to throw at least six innings in each of his four starts and has pitched into the seventh twice. Rogers and Lopez have gotten through six innings twice each.
Daniel Castano made it five innings in his first start of the season. Nick Neidert, who was optioned off the active roster on Wednesday, did not make it through the fifth in any of his three starts.
Short starts result in a trickle-down effect on the bullpen, which then has to throw more innings than the Marlins likely would want them to pitch. Ten Marlins relievers have made a combined 69 appearances in 17 games. That’s tied with the Chicago Cubs for the second most in baseball. Meanwhile, 67 of Miami’s 154 2/3 innings pitched have come from the bullpen — 43.3 percent.
And even with the wave of starting pitching injuries early on this season, Ng said the organization’s focus is to rely on in-house players for reinforcements for the time being. That’s why Castano, who pitched to a 3.03 ERA in seven appearances last year, is in the rotation. That’s why Neidert got an opportunity.
Right-hander Jordan Holloway, who was used out of the bullpen in his one appearance so far this season but is viewed as a starter, and left-hander Braxton Garrett, who made two starts last season, are the top in-house candidates left beyond the group that is currently pitching or working back from injury.
“I feel like it’s really important for us to stay within the organization at this point,” Ng said, “and really look to those guys to try and use their experiences from last year to come in and try to help us and to pitch this year to get more experience.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 3:02 PM.
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