Jeter, Ng dish on Sixto, Marte and the Marlins’ wait-and-see approach to trade deadline
Monday was, in many ways, a perfect encapsulation of his bizarre, frustrating Miami Marlins season. The day began with the Marlins officially shutting down Sixto Sanchez for the season after an MRI revealed the need for shoulder surgery, then, in the wake of another injury-related setback, Miami snapped rallied to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to start its final homestand before the All-Star break.
Once the thrill of the one-run victory wore off, it was back to reality for the Marlins, who still are firmly situated in the cellar of the National League East — nine games behind the first-place New York Mets despite the division’s best run differential — and now will officially have to climb out of it without any help from their top prospect.
The midway point of the 2021 MLB season is passed, the 2021 MLB All-Star Game is on the horizon and the trade deadline is less than four weeks away. It’s a pivotal part of the calendar for Miami, and general manager Kim Ng and CEO Derek Jeter have a long list of questions to sort through.
“We’ve been inconsistent. I don’t think there’s any other way you can say it. We’ve shown flashes of how good we can be,” Jeter said. “I still believe it’s a team that can run off a good two, three weeks and be right back in the middle of things, so one day at a time, but that’s the approach we should be taking.”
What’s next for Sixto Sanchez?
The Marlins’ strength this season has been their top three starting pitchers. One of their most persistent questions has been the last two spots in the rotation. Any lingering hope of Sanchez filling one of those openings before the end of the year is now officially gone.
An MRI on Friday revealed a small tear in the posterior capsule of Sanchez’s right shoulder and Miami announced season-ending surgery for the rookie Monday. Sanchez, who posted a 3.46 ERA in seven games last year and began 2021 with the expectation to contend for an MLB Rookie of the Year Award, never pitched in a game this season as he battled his nagging shoulder injury.
“Once we got those results and really didn’t see much progress, he just got to a certain point where we thought that we needed to take the next step, which was the surgery,” Ng said. “From all reports, his attitude’s basically about as good as you can expect. Went out there every day and gave it his best shot, but, in the end, he’s going to have to just go through this. In the end, I think he will be stronger for it because I think, obviously, this is a real obstacle for him in his career early on, but we’re hoping he’ll come back even better.”
Sanchez’s year began with a visa issue delaying his arrival at spring training, then a false positive COVID-19 test briefly knocked him out of commission again. He pitched in just three Grapefruit League games, so the Marlins sent him to the alternate training site in Jacksonville, where he started to experience discomfort in his shoulder in March. Sanchez, who’s the No. 11 prospect in the MLB.com rankings, never got healthy enough to pitch in a real game.
Miami did its best to avoid surgery for the 22-year-old pitcher, Ng said, but Sanchez’s rehab never progressed far enough.
The Marlins now hope Sanchez will be able to resume throwing a few months after the surgery, Ng said, and expect him to be ready in time for spring training next year. It’s unlikely he goes to pitch in winter ball, Ng said.
“You’ve got to look at the big picture and hope that he has a very, very long career,” Jeter said, “and this is just a minor setback.”
The latest on Starling Marte
If it can fight back into contention in July, Miami could now face more urgency to target another starter — although both Ng and Jeter declined to delve into specific positions of need. If the Marlins can’t, the biggest question it will face is what to do with Starling Marte.
The outfielder, who’s in the final year of his contract, said last month he would like to stay in Miami and the Marlins have offered him an extension, sources told the Miami Herald. However, the Marlins are also likely to move him if they can’t agree to a deal, sources told the Herald.
“One thing is it’s refreshing to hear a player say that they want to be here,” Jeter said. “When we first got here, I don’t think that was necessarily the case. Now we have players that want to stay here and want to play in Miami. I’ll leave it at that because I don’t ever get into negotiations.”
With the Marlins not yet ready to give up on a playoff push, Miami is firmly taking a wait-and-see approach to the debate over where it will buy or sell — or do something in between.
A potential Marte deal could happen as late as July 31, Ng said.
“I’ve been part of deals where we’re at 12:59, T-minus 10 seconds. I think that’s one option,” Ng said. “If we don’t get to a situation that we want to be in, there’s another option where he stays a Marlin and we still have an opportunity to talk to him. I think there’s situations after the offseason, so I wouldn’t make the 31st the be all, end all of this.”
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Miami Marlins’ trade-deadline approach
The Marlins moved within 8 1/2 games of the Mets with their 2-1, 10-inning win against the Dodgers on Tuesday, but their run differential suggested they should be five games over, according to their Pythagorean expectation. It makes the deadline situation challenging: With a big hill to climb to get back into contention, is it time for Miami to sell? Or does their positive run differential mean an inevitable run is coming for the Marlins?
Jeter, Ng and Co. have less than four weeks to decide, and, for now, there’s no need to rush to any decision, even as daily conversations have begun with other teams.
“Anything that we feel can make the club better, we’re going to explore and we’re going to talk to other clubs, and I can say that’s for the long term or the short term,” Ng said. “With the pitching that we have and we have Brian [Anderson] coming back, et cetera, we are an interesting club and you can see that when we play our division rivals we don’t roll over for anybody, so I feel that this is an interesting division. I feel like if we got on a little roll here and the timing was right — it’s interesting. It’s a good situation.”
Said Jeter: “I don’t think anything changes for us. When we got here, we said what our plan was going to be was we’re going to build the organization, we’re going to give our guys an opportunity to play. Nothing has changed in that sense. Every team every year, when you get toward the trade deadline, you have to make some decisions with some players, but that’s not anything that’s unique to this situation here.”
Up next
The Marlins (37-47) and Dodgers (53-33) both used six relief pitchers Tuesday. Now they both head into Wednesday planning to use plenty more.
Neither Miami nor Los Angeles named a starter and both plan on bullpen games for the third game of their series in Miami. First pitch is set for 7 p.m. The Marlins took the first two games of the series after Marte took third base and scored after a wild pitch and error in the bottom of the 10th in front of 7,993 at loanDepot park on Sunday.
This story was originally published July 6, 2021 at 7:00 PM.
