Marlins
Right-hander Tom Koehler, right, says Miami has depth in the starting rotation.
JUPITER — Tom Koehler hears your critique of the Miami Marlins’ starting rotation, and he gets it. It’s impossible to fill the void left by Jose Fernandez. The club doesn’t have an ace, or even an obvious by default No. 1 starter. The front office added mid-to back-end arms to round out the starting five, and the Marlins’ decision-makers have been open about expecting fewer innings out of this year’s starters.
But Koehler is making the argument of known quantity over elite quality.
“For the first time, we have a rotation full of depth. Yes, there's a glaring hole. We see that. We're missing our ace. Nobody's going to take that and fill in. We understand that,” Koehler said.
“The reason we haven’t succeeded in the past is we’ve used 13-plus starting pitchers three out of the past four years. If everybody can stay healthy andwe can run our five guys out there, that’ll end up benefiting us more than having one superstar ace and then a bunch of mixing and matching throughout theway.
“When you look at it on paper, yes, we’re missing that clear-cut No. 1. We’re hoping that guys can step up. … Butwe have guys who have gone tee to green and thrown those innings. If we can stay healthy, we think we can do a really good job of handing the ball to the bullpen with a lead more nights than not.”
The numbers back up much of Koehler’s case. The first year he went “tee to green” in the rotation, 2014, the Marlins used 13 starting pitchers, 12 of whom made multiple starts. The same was true in 2015. Last year, it was 13 starters with 11 getting the ballmore than once.
The Marlins have also gotten fewer and fewer outs from the rotation in those seasons — 5.85 innings on average in 2014, 5.62 in ’15, 5.44 in ’16 — part of a larger trend across baseball to turn to the bullpen earlier in the game.
Four of the Marlins’ five likely starters (Koehler, Edinson Volquez, Wei-Yin Chen, Dan Straily) have made 30 starts in a year at least three times. Those four have a combined13 seasons in which they tossed at least 180 innings. Only Volquez has reached the 200-inning plateau (200 1⁄ 3 in 2015), but the way manager Don Mattingly and others talk about pulling starters early to go to a loaded-up bullpen, that traditionally significant number will be less so for the 2017Marlins.
“It’s the deepest rotation we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Koehler said. “We have four guys who have done it, and the one guy who hasn’t gone tee to green is potentially our best guy.”
That’s Adam Conley. An injury limited him to 133 1⁄ 3 innings in 2016, but he has been open about his desire and self-expectation to emerge as the Marlins’ No. 1.
The quality of the Marlins’ rotation doesn’t compare well right now to the teams they expect to compete against. According to ERA+— which adjusts ERA for ballpark and other factors, and sets the league average at 100 — only Chen (104) and Conley (102) have been above-average pitchers in their careers, and even then only marginally so.
But if the starters can take the ball every five games and keep the Marlins
from having to dip too far into their depth, Koehler says it can work.
Big Tuna hangs with fish
The Marlins hada special guest during their Sunday workout: former NFL head coach/Miami Dolphins executive Bill Parcells.
Parcells, who is buddies with third-base coach Fredi Gonzalez and spends his winters in Jupiter, waited along the edge of the team’s primary practice field at the Roger Dean Stadium complex as they came out of the clubhouse to stretch. Mattingly stopped by for a 10-minute chat as his players warmed up.
Mattingly and Parcells don’t know each other particularly well, but theywere both stars in 1980s New York. Mattingly, of course, was a Gold Glove first baseman and regular MVP candidate for the Yankees. Parcells coached the NFL’s Giants to Super Bowl wins after the 1986 and 1990 seasons.