Last man standing
Remember that pitching depth you thought would carry the Marlins to greatness? They appear to be on the verge of opening the 2024 season with one healthy and remotely proven pitcher in their rotation
I hate to say I told you so, but…you know…I told you so.
I first wrote about the Marlins’ need to bolster their starting pitching depth on July 4, 4 weeks before last season’s trade deadline…
I wrote about the team’s lack of pitching depth again when the issue rared its ugly head in September…
Days after last season ended, with the Marlins limping into the Wild Card series with only 2 starting pitchers they trusted, I asked once more…
And shortly before Christmas, I wrote about what a mistake it would be if the Marlins, as was being reported, contemplated trading from their supposed starting pitching depth…
And now, here we are.
Less than 2 weeks out from Opening Day, the only healthy and big league-proven lock to be among the Marlins’ season-opening starting 5 is Jesus Luzardo.
Sandy Alcantara had Tommy John surgery in October and will miss all of 2024. Braxton Garrett, Eury Perez and Edward Cabrera are all also expected to open the season on the injured list.
Trevor Rogers, who made only 4 starts and worked a mere 18 innings due to injury last year, hasn’t thrown a regular season major league pitch since last April 19. And while he’s healthy at the moment (or at least he was last time we checked), the fact is he’s averaged fewer than 15 starts and fewer than 72 innings per season since making his big league debut in 2020, having endured 5 trips to the injured list over the last 3 seasons alone.
And when he has been on the mound, the lefthander has a career ERA north of 5 if you remove an 11-start hot stretch in the opening weeks of the 2021 season. Are you willing to bank on Rogers to pick up some of the slack with 30 starts and 180 mostly high-level innings?
Who among next men up Ryan Weathers (31 career ML starts with a 6.41 ERA), A.J. Puk (0 ML starts), Max Meyer (2 ML starts and working his way back from Tommy John surgery), Devin Smeltzer (20 ML starts over parts of 5 seasons), George Soriano (one ML start as an opener), Bryan Hoeing (8 career ML starts with a 7.96 ERA), Patrick Monteverde (0 pitches thrown in the big leagues and only 2 starts as high as Triple-A) and Sixto Sanchez (7 ML starts in 2020 and not a single big league pitch thrown since) can be counted on to take the ball every 5 days and reasonably be expected to have any modicum of sustained success over the 6-month marathon.
Who among that group are you willing to count on to match up against the Braves, Phillies, Dodgers and the rest of the National League?
The only move the Marlins have made since the end of last season to meaningfully add to their offense, which ranked last in the NL in scoring in 2023 and is dead-last in MLB in runs scored since the beginning of the Sherman era in 2018 (and that was with the since departed 36-home run slugger Jorge Soler) is the addition of shortstop Tim Anderson, the former White Sox, whose .582 OPS in 2023 was the lowest among the 245 major leaguers who had at least 350 plate appearances.
His .582 OPS in 2023 is nearly 100 points lower than the career mark of former Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis, who was a terrific hitter for a pitcher, but come on.
The Marlins used 14 different starting pitchers in both of the last 2 seasons. They used 18 starting pitchers in 2021. On average, they’ve used 13 starters a season over the last decade.
At the moment, they appear prepared to open the season with only one healthy and remotely established major league starter on their roster.
And coupon-clipping , BOGO-hunting Bruce Sherman can keep a straight face when he says he wants this team to return to the playoffs?
It’s every bit as obvious as it is unfathomable that the organization grossly overestimated its collection of starting pitching. It’s malpractice that could well end any chance the Marlins have of being competitive in 2024 before the Opening Day bunting is even hung.
The truth is the Marlins never had the kind of starting pitching depth that allows for an owner and president of baseball operations to operate with the hubris that Sherman and rookie POBO Peter Bendix did. I’ve been shouting that from the bleachers since last July (when Bendix was still 2nd in command with the Rays, watching 3 of his top starters succumb to Tommy John surgery).
The Marlins haven’t even reached the starting line yet, and a series of pitching injuries, large and small, have them in jeopardy of being lapped by the competition.
They’ve put manager Skip Schumaker and respected pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. in a position where they’re going to have to cobble together a season-opening rotation with spit and baling wire.
Instead of giving away absurdly non-sensical T-shirts this season that were unveiled in recent days (pictured below left), it might be fitting for the Marlins to give away mini replicas of the Venus de Milo (below right), purportedly created in the 2nd century BC by Hellenistic sculptor Alexandros of Antioch.
She had no arms.
At the moment, neither does the local 9.
While you’re here…
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Learn more about one-on-one play-by-play coaching from Glenn Geffner via Zoom at GlennGeffner.com.
The league's starting pitchers seem to be going down in record numbers, but I don't know if this is documented statistically. Still, teams are vastly overpaying (Lynn, Giolito, Smyly, and on and on) for what are increasingly five-inning guys anyway. With many attributing the demand (requirement?) for speeds in the upper 90s, perhaps the three-inning opener makes sense to reduce wear. Maybe there will be a resurrection of Maddux-esque pitching masters. We are told that MLB hitters eventually catch up with any speed, so craftsmanship and injury avoidance seem to converge. On last thought: with such a dearth of acceptable pitching, is expansion even smart? We realize it's quite lucrative for current owners, so it will occur, of course.
Sanchez and pray for rain doesn’t work in
A stadium with a retractable roof. Hopefully the injured pitchers will not be out for long. But it is going to take a miracle to bridge this gap.