O’Grady off to disabled list
Despaigne a possibility to make a start
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Another Miami Marlins starting pitcher is hurt, lefthander Chris O’Grady landing on the 10-day disabled list Tuesday with a strained right oblique. For a team that has already used 11 starters this year — including three who are on the DL and three who were, at various points, demoted to the minors based on performance — the list of potential replacements is not a long one.
Manager Don Mattingly said right-handed swingman Odrisamer Despaigne is a candidate to start in O’Grady’s place, Saturday against the Colorado Rockies at Marlins Park. But Mattingly also talked about how valuable Despaigne is to the club in his long-relief role.
So it’s worth asking: How close is Double-A lefthander Dillon Peters, the Marlins’ No. 4 prospect as ranked by MLB Pipeline, to being major league-ready?
The short answer is not particularly close. The Marlins don’t intend to promote him to start Saturday.
The long answer is, well, longer, but also more hopeful. Peters, 24, is the Marlins’ starting pitching prospect closest to the majors, and it’s possible he makes that jump as a September call-up.
Peters has a 2.89 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in six starts with Jacksonville, but those halfdozen games don’t tell the story of his season. A fractured left thumb, suffered in mid-April, robbed him of two and a half months of innings and valuable upper-minors experience.
Even though it’s August — and the minor league season is winding down — Peters is workload-wise where he would have been in May. The jump from High A to Double A is a big one, perhaps the toughest on a player’s way up the minor league ladder, and Peters is still new to the level.
“This is a separator. Dillon really hasn’t pitched a lot in Double A,” said Storm Davis, Jacksonville’s pitching coach. “He’s finding out that some of these lineups are a little longer, a little deeper than most [in the lower levels], but he’s adapting.
“He’s learning, through adversity, what he’s got to do to pitch and survive innings to get to the next one.”
Davis said Peters increasingly understands sequencing and is figuring out how and when to mix in his curveball, his No. 2 pitch, more often. That’s something he didn’t have to think about as hard in the lower levels, where it’s easier to blow a fastball past less experienced hitters.
Take Peters’ most recent start, Sunday against Birmingham, as an example. Peters didn’t have his twoseamer quite working. He had to go to his offspeed stuff — the curve and his changeup — a bit more than normal. He got through it with an OK line in the box score: three runs in five innings.
“Part of it is getting out there and competing, making mistakes, failing and understanding why you failed and how to [fix it],” Davis said.
The Marlins consider Peters a part of their future. Just not the imminent future.
Guerra returns to majors
To replace O’Grady on the roster, the Marlins selected right-handed reliever Javy Guerra from Triple-A New Orleans.
Guerra, 31, has pitched parts of six major league seasons (though no full one since 2014) with three teams, with a career 2.99 ERA and 1.40 WHIP. In 33 appearances, about half of them lasting more than one inning, Guerra posted a 4.99 ERA and 1.31 WHIP.
Hospital trip
Several Marlins, including Christian Yelich, J.T. Realmuto, Dan Straily, Adam Conley and Brad Ziegler, spent part of their Tuesday visiting veterans at the Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“It’s a privilege to be able to visit the hospital and see the guys and girls rehabbing — and basically to be able to say thanks, more than anything else,” said Mattingly, who also went.