After breakout seasons, two relievers will once again anchor Miami Marlins’ bullpen
At this time last year, the Miami Marlins weren’t entirely sure what they had in left-handed pitchers Tanner Scott and Andrew Nardi. Scott always had the pure stuff to be a dominant reliever but never had the command to consistently execute. Nardi had just come off a rookie season in which he admitted was a failure as he adjusted to the learning curve that comes with a big-league debut.
This year, there’s no doubt about how much the Marlins value Scott and Nardi after they anchored Miami’s bullpen and became one of the more effective one-two relief pitcher combos in Major League Baseball over the course of the 2023 season to help the Marlins make a playoff appearance for the first time in a full season since 2003.
Nardi emerged as one of the best relievers in baseball in terms of stranding runners as he built his way into being Miami’s primary set-up guy, while Scott finished the year as the closer and was tied for the highest wins above replacement of any reliever in MLB, according to FanGraphs.
“It shows you what happens when you’re motivated and guys believe in you,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “Our coaching staff did a really good job of letting know how much we believe in them. And their stuff is good. ... Those two guys are going to be a big part of what we’re trying to do here.”
They went through the journey of proving themselves together. They’ll remain together as they work to build on that success in 2024.
“On and off the field, we’re just great together,” Nardi said. “We get along very well. Just two guys wanting to pitch.”
Added Scott: “When you go down to the bullpen, we all become closer. It’s like we’re in our own world in a way and you build a relationship with everyone down there. It’s good to see. I was happy with him succeeding and I was happy with how I did. We’re gonna get back to it this year.”
‘Just go out there and attack’
For Scott, who the Marlins acquired from the Baltimore Orioles days before the 2022 season, his evolution last season came down to a simple message.
“Just go out there and attack,” he said.
That had been easier said than done for him to that point in his career, primarily because he couldn’t consistently find the strike zone.
In 2021, his final season in Baltimore, Scott had a 14.7-percent walk rate that was the fifth-worst in baseball among relievers who pitched at least 50 innings. In 2022, his first season with the Marlins, that number jumped even higher to an MLB-worst 15.9 percent.
In 2023, Scott cut that in half to a career-best 7.8 percent. He was throwing more strikes, keeping more pitches around the zone.
And he did it without compromising his pitching arsenal — a four-seam fastball that averages almost 97 mph and a slider that averages almost 90 mph and had a 40.3 percent whiff rate last season.
The result: Scott set career-best marks for appearances (74), innings (78) and strikeouts (104). His 2.31 ERA and .191 batting average against were also the best in his career outside of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season (1.31 ERA, .164 batting average against) when he only pitched 20 2/3 innings.
Over the final two months of the season, Scott gave up just three earned runs over 27 1/3 innings (a 0.99 ERA) while striking out 33 of 101 batters he faced and walking just three. He converted 10 of 12 save opportunities in that stretch after taking over the closer role in late August after A.J. Puk and David Robertson primarily handled the role for most of the season.
Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. said he couldn’t pinpoint an exact date as to when everything came together for Scott. Rather, it was “an accumulation of a lot of things that happened for him” — primarily finding ways to have his successes from bullpens and catch sessions carry over into games.
“The confidence built and before you know it, he was in and out of at-bats, throwing strikes, getting his strikeouts,” Stottlemyre said. “It was like a domino effect. It just started falling into play. It was an absolutely beautiful thing. If you asked me to draw that out for the next guy and think that he’s going to follow that path, I wish I had that magical formula in here. I’d hand it to everyone.”
Learning from failure
For Nardi, his breakout came after reflecting on what went wrong during his first stint in the big leagues.
Nardi struggled in debut season, pitching to a 9.82 ERA over 14 2/3 innings in 13 games in 2022.
In a glass-half-empty sense, Nardi said, he “failed” in 2022.
In a glass-half-full perspective, Nardi took the experience as an opportunity to have a better understanding of what he needed to work on to contribute to the team.
Schumaker, entering his first year as the Marlins’ manager in 2023, said he needed to watch just one bullpen session to be intrigued by what Nardi could offer.
“I looked at Stot and he said, ‘Well, he looks different,’” Schumaker said.
Nardi impressed enough during camp and, coupled with a pair of relievers in Steven Okert and Tommy Nance opening the season on the injured list, broke spring training on the Opening Day roster.
He never gave up his spot.
Nardi pitched to a 2.67 ERA with 73 strikeouts against 21 walks over 57 1/3 innings.
Perhaps most impressive: Nardi stranded 86.4 percent of runners on base against him; that was the seventh-best mark among 157 relievers last season who threw at least 50 innings. He also only allowed five of 40 runners he inherited to score. Nardi was one of 16 pitchers in MLB last season to inherit at least 40 runners and had the best success rate out of all of them.
“I’ve still got a chip on my shoulder,” Nardi said. “Nothing’s permanent yet. Sure, I definitely had a good year, but I can’t just stop there. I need to keep getting better. Still just on the attack.”
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