Miami Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara is having a season to remember. The league is taking notice
This is the third in a three-part series highlighting the Miami Marlins’ representatives at the 2022 MLB All-Star Game. To read Part 1 on Garrett Cooper, click here. To read Part 2 on Jazz Chisholm Jr., click here.
On the days that Sandy Alcantara is starting, Miami Marlins pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. tries to avoid eye contact with his ace as much as possible.
“I don’t like looking at him,” Stottlemyre said. “He wants to kill me, too.”
Alcantara is locked in hours before first pitch, getting into game mode well before going to the mound to throw seven, eight, sometimes nine innings with what looks like relative ease.
“I hope that we can continue that,” Stottlemyre said. “I expect him to continue to do what he’s doing. He sets the bar.”
But don’t just take Stottlemyre’s word for how good of a pitcher Alcantara has become.
Take a poll of managers and players around Major League Baseball that have faced Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara over the past two months, and the opinion on him appears to stay the same.
Start with Braves manager Brian Snitker, who could only shake his head and metaphorically tip his cap after Alcantara held his team to four runs (just one earned) with 21 strikeouts over 17 innings in consecutive starts back in May.
“His stuff is so good,” Snitker said, “I don’t even know if familiarity matters.”
Or Nationals manager Dave Martinez, whose team was held to six hits over nine shutout innings when it last faced Alcantara on June 8.
“He’s the best in our league, I think. I really do,” Nationals manager Dave Martinez said. “He’s got good stuff. He was tough all night long. He kept us off balance. You’re not going to see anybody better than that right there. He’s really good.”
Or the Mets’ Buck Showalter, whose team has seen Alcantara three times now and only had one successful outing against him and even then have been held to nine runs (eight earned) over 22 innings.
“Everybody knows what he is going to do and he does it anyway,” Showalter said. “It’s not like he is going to break something out that is new [or] different and [you] didn’t see that coming.”
Or Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins, who is 1 for 7 with two strikeouts but has managed to draw three of the 33 walks issued by Alcantara this season.
“It’s something you go through and talk about it beforehand,” Hoskins said. “In the division, we’ve seen him every time this year. Seen him too much really. We know he throws strikes. You see the low walk rates. Obviously, he pounds the zone.”
Or the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, the 10-time All-Star and three-time MVP who went 1 for 3 with two strikeouts and an infield single against Alcantara in their first-ever matchup on July 5.
“You have to get a good pitch to hit, and he’s got good stuff — some of the best I’ve seen,” Trout told MLB.com. “He’s got great numbers. I talked to a lot of guys around the league, and he’s up there with good stuff.”
In case the numbers didn’t already back it up, the consensus is clear: Sandy Alcantara, an All-Star for the second time in his young MLB career, is earning respect around the league as he builds up a 2022 resume worthy of a Cy Young Award and continues his evolution into one of MLB’s top pitchers.
The 26-year-old power throwing righty is a throwback workhorse, leading the majors in innings pitches (138 1/3) while entering the All-Star Break with the second-best ERA (1.76).
He’s on a run of 13 consecutive starts with at least seven innings pitched and has given up no more than two earned runs in 12 of those outings. And those 13 games? Nine have come against teams with winning records — three against the Mets, two against the Braves, two against the Phillies and one apiece against the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants.
“It’s without a doubt the longest run or string of outings like this that I’ve ever had the privilege to sit and watch,” Stottlemyre said. “And at the end of the day, I know we all look at the finished product or the game or the line scores. I’ve watched him do it without his good stuff.”
Becoming a ‘household name’
In the midst of this emergence from top pitcher in the Marlins’ rotation to arguably the top pitcher in baseball this season, the case continued to build for Alcantara to be the National League’s starting pitcher on Tuesday.
That nod didn’t come, with the honor going instead to the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw.
Alcantara isn’t letting it faze him.
“I’m here to do my job,” Alcantara said.
That job is going out to the mound every five games and simply dominate.
Alcantara has done that.
His 15 quality starts — giving up no more than three earned runs while pitching at least six innings — are tied for second in MLB. He’s one of two pitchers to have thrown multiple complete games this season along with the Astros’ Framber Valdez (and has a third nine-inning outing to go with it). And he’s among the top 10 in MLB in batting average against (fourth, .190), walks and hits per inning pitched (fifth, 0.90) and groundball double plays forced (tied for fourth, 14).
And he’s doing it with efficiency. Alcantara is averaging just 14.06 pitches per inning, the lowest in baseball.
“Baseball is finding out who this guy is,” Stottlemyre Jr. said.
The Marlins, meanwhile, already knew who Alcantara was and the potential that he had. That’s why they locked him up to a five-year, $56 million deal with an option for a sixth year this offseason.
“What he has done has been phenomenal,” said general manager Kim Ng, who called Alcantara a “quintessential ace” at the press conference announcing the extension. “When you compare him to many of the pitchers out there, what he has been able to string together over this long a period of time has been tremendous. He is starting to become a household name.”
It’s what Miami hoped would be the case when they acquired him in December 2017 along with Zac Gallen, Daniel Castano and Magneuris Sierra from the Cardinals in the Marcell Ozuna trade.
Marlins assistant general manager Brian Chattin, the highest ranking member of the Marlins’ current front office staff who is still with the organization from the time of the trade, first saw Alcantara pitch in person in 2015. Alcantara was with the Cardinals’ rookie-level affiliate in the then-Gulf Coast League at the time, but it was apparent even then that Alcantara’s potential was immense.
“We felt that there was so much projection to him, that we felt that the delivery was repeatable enough, there was enough athleticism there,” Chattin said. “Certainly wasn’t a finished product at the time that we were pursuing him, but we felt like there was potential there to be a top-rotation-type pitcher, and he’s fortunately gotten there and even exceeded those expectations.”
‘We owe him’
And Alcantara’s value to the club extends beyond what he does on the mound. His ability to pitch deep into games virtually every game has a rollover effect on the rest of the pitching staff.
“Every time he pitches, your bullpen gets a day off,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “He has thrown seven, eight innings every time out it seems like. The next day, the bullpen is fresh.”
Added reliever Anthony Bass: “He made a comment that we need to start paying him because whenever he pitches, we get the night off, so we owe him.”
What stands out the most to Stottlemyre about Alcantara’s performance this season?
“The fact that he’s been consistent — we’ll start out with that — and with really good stuff,” the pitching coach said. “I’ve seen a couple shaky bullpens that I think in the past would have probably led to not getting the results and getting out of the zone. He’s committed to getting in the zone and he obviously has a confidence to throw his stuff in the zone. He gets it now.”
The Marlins will monitor Alcantara over the second half of the season. While Alcantara trains to be able to pitch nine innings every start — and the expectation has come to the point that he pitches at least seven every time he’s on the mound — Alcantara is fewer than 70 innings away from his single-season career high of 205 2/3 innings with just under two and a half months of the season left to play.
After he takes the mound on Tuesday, in whatever inning that may be, Alcantara’s focus will shift back to the season and making sure he can replicate the success of the first half to the best of his ability.
“Just keep doing the same,” Alcantara said. “Keep being healthy. Keep competing. Just be able to go outside every fifth day and do my job.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 12:08 PM.
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