Cy Young front-runner Alcantara shut down for rest of the season
MILWAUKEE
Sandy Alcantara’s Cy Young Award-worthy season has come to a close.
Miami Marlins manager
Don Mattingly on Saturday announced the team is shutting down Alcantara for the rest of the season, meaning the team’s ace won’t take the mound for Miami’s regular-season finale on Wednesday against the Atlanta Braves as originally scheduled.
“Sandy, obviously, is one of those guys that’s going to want to keep going,” Mattingly said, “but organizationally, we felt like there was no reason to have him continue with the innings that he’s thrown this year.”
So with that, Alcantara finishes the season with a 2.28 ERA over an MLBleading 228 2⁄3 innings — the fifth-most in a season in Marlins history and 8 2⁄3 innings shy of Kevin Brown’s franchise record of 237 ⁄3 set in 1997 — and
1
207 strikeouts.
His ERA is the fifth-best in baseball and second in the National League only to Julio Urias’12.12.
He has thrown 29 ⁄3 more innings than the next closest pitcher (the St.
Louis Cardinals’ Miles
Mikolas).
He threw his MLBleading sixth complete game of the season on Friday in the Marlins’ 1-0 loss to the Brewers, pitching eight dominant innings and matching zeroes with reigning NL Cy Young Award winner
Corbin Burnes for five innings before giving up his lone run in the sixth.
It was a performance that got a nod of approval from Burnes.
“Yeah, he’d be the Cy Young for me this year,” Burnes said. “What he’s done as far as going deep into games, doing it startin and start-out, he doesn’t have many blowup outings. He goes out there and gives them seven, eight or nine innings, and gives them a chance to win. Obviously, they’re not the best baseball team this year, which makes it even tougher to go out there and do what he’s doing.”
Even more: Alcantara is the first pitcher in Marlins franchise history to have multiple seasons with 200 innings pitched and 200 strikeouts and the first in MLB to do so in consecutive seasons since Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom in 2018 and 2019.
He is the first pitcher in MLB to throw at least six complete games in a season since Chris Sale in 2016. He is also the first pitcher to throw at least
228 2⁄3 innings in a season since David Price threw 230 innings in that 2016 season. Only three pitchers in Marlins franchise history have more than six complete games in a season: Livan Hernandez (franchise-record nine in 1998), A.J. Burnett (seven in 2002) and Dontrelle Willis (seven in 2005).
“What stood out [this season] really is just him getting better,” Mattingly said. “Last year, we thought he was pretty good but he kept getting better. His confidence grows, he seems more on the attack. The guy doesn’t really back off anybody anymore. You’ve seen in the past, he was careful with certain guys — now he’s just on the attack all the time. It’s hard to put it on one thing. He just keeps getting better. The bar’s pretty high and he keeps setting it higher.”
The only question that really remained after that performance was whether Alcantara would make that final start of the season.
Mattingly postgame Friday said the organization was discussing the plan “because there’s some concerns with the amount of volume that he’s thrown this year.”
Alcantara, unsurprisingly, wanted the ball.
“Why not?” Alcantara said. “If they say I’m not going to start the game, I’m going to feel so bad because I want to finish strong, finish all my starts. I want to pitch.”
The Marlins decided against it, but Alcantara was ultimately understanding of the move. Prior to Miami’s game against the Brewers on Saturday, he posted a thank you message to fans on Twitter.
“I hope everyone enjoyed my tour,” Alcantara posted. “Thank you all for the support and love.”
THIS AND THAT
The Marlins are now A 22-39 in one-run games and have been shut out 14 times this season. The 61 one-run games are the second-most in franchise history, behind only the 64 in the 2014 season.
Mattingly on the Marlins A having a chance to play spoiler over the final stretch of the season, with the Brewers contending for the National League’s final wild-card spot and the Braves still in the mix to win the NL East: “You are in a spot to play meaningful games, which is nice. It would be nice if they were more meaningful for us from the standpoint of trying to get in [the postseason].”