Marlins taking different approach with young pitchers, position players
With their starting pitching staff, the Marlins have committed entirely to youth, fully comfortable in using a rotation without a single pitcher who has made even 50 big league starts. With their outfield and first base, not so much.
Credit the Marlins for spending the money, over the past 14 months, to add three veteran starting outfielders — Corey Dickerson, Starling Marte and Adam Duvall. But the decision to play an all-veteran outfield — barring injuries or trades — also means delaying extended big-league auditions for any of the team’s top outfield prospects
(Monte Harrison and
Jesus Sanchez are the closest of the group).
They’re taking the same approach at first base, where Lewin Diaz gets more minor-league seasoning while Jesus Aguilar and Garrett Cooper hold down the position.
“Our young position players, we had a little success but not the success we would have liked,”
Don Mattingly said Wednesday.
The Marlins would like one of their better prospects (Jazz Chisholm or Isan Diaz) to win the second base job, with veteran Jon Berti available as the “backup” plan.
With the pitching staff, there is no veteran fallback option, now that José Ureña has moved onto Detroit. That means a rotation of three young veterans — Sandy Alcantara (45 big-league starts), Pablo Lopez (42), Elieser Hernandez (42), likely
Sixto Sanchez (7) and potentially Trevor Rogers (7) or Edward Cabrera
(0) or Nick Neidert (0).
Why the difference in approach between pitching and the outfield?
Two fold: 1) The Marlins liked Duvall and felt his power would help. 2) They believe the young outfielders could use more minor league at-bats after struggles last season.
“Adam continues to get better and better and we saw it first hand from Atlanta,” Mattingly said. “He puts power into our lineup. You would love those guys [Harrison, Sanchez] to continue to get at bats. The worst thing for a young guy is to be here and not play. With Monte and Sanchez, we love their talent and what we think they can be, but they’re part of a big mix — JJ Bleday, Kameron Misner, Peyton Burdick. There’s going to be stiff competition for spots in the outfield” long term.
While it could have been fully justified to “allot” one outfield spot to some combination of Harrison, Sanchez, Lewis Brinson or Magneuris Sierra, that would also have been risky.
Sanchez, a .296 hitter in the minors, went just 1 for 25 with two RBI and 11 strikeouts in his Marlins cameo last summer and his plate discipline needs work.
Harrison hit .170 — 8 for 47 — with 26 strikeouts and a home run in 51 plate appearances. “I don’t really know what to do at this point,” The Athletic’s Keith Law, a longtime minor league evaluator, wrote. “He has too much ability to say he’s not a prospect but there’s no major league role for a guy who has this much trouble making contact.”
Brinson showed improvement last season, especially against lefties (.260) but still hit just .226 overall. Sierra has .247 in 315 career plate appearances) and it’s difficult to project him as a full-time starter.
The Marlins’ most-polished hitting outfield prospect is Bleday, who hasn’t played above high A ball. Burdick — who hit .308, with 11 homers and 64 RBI in 69 games in the lowlevel minors — would be second or third on that list, in the conversation with Sanchez. Connor Scott, Jerar Encarnacion, Misner, Victor Victor Mesa and his brother Victor Jr.
are talented outfield prospects, but need to show a lot of growth.
If any of the outfield prospect are ready for an extended look by this summer, Miami could always trade the expiring contracts of Dickerson or Marte if the team is out of wild card contention.
As for first base, the Marlins made the right move retaining Aguilar, because of Cooper’s past injury issues and because Diaz went 6 for 39 (.154) with 12 strikeouts during his Marlins cameo last season. Mattingly said Cooper will play some right field.
Mattingly said catcher
Jorge Alfaro has worked on improving his interaction with a pitching staff (his game calling needed work) and Mattingly expects him to bounce back. Alfaro was replaced by
Chad Wallach in the playoffs. “We think he can still be that guy who’s a run producer, dangerous in our order and a force,” Mattingly said of Alfaro.
Mattingly mentioned
Anthony Bass, Yimi Garcia and Dylan Floro as back-end bullpen candidates but added “almost every guy in our pen can pitch late in the game.”
He said the Marlins have discussed the possibility of using a six-man rotation but they won’t do that to start the season.
Mattingly’s general thoughts: “We hang our hat on our pitching. Every time we put a starter out there, we feel we have a
guy who will keep us in the game. We want to play a pressure game with speed.”
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