Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Miami Marlins
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
I somehow whiffed on the Marlins! I have been ordering these in ascending order of wins, and I totally skipped over the 69-win Marlins. There is plenty of fantasy goodness on this team, so we have to get to it!
Pitchers
Sandy Alcantara
He’s been the league’s biggest workhorse for several years now:
2019: 197.1 IP
2020: 42.0 IP
2021: 205.2 IP
2022: 228.2 IP
He led the league in innings pitched last year and basically lapped the field (Aaron Nola came in second way down at 205, only eight pitchers got to 200).
He had his best year, and will likely win the Cy Young Award
32 GS, 2.28 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 23.4% K%, 5.6% BB%, 13.6% SwStr%, 28.9% CSW%
The K% came down a touch from 2021 (24% there), but Alcantara is one guy we don’t have to worry about the K% with, unless you’re in a K/9 league or something like that. The volume gets him there in strikeouts, and he has proven over and over again that he can be elite at limiting base runners even with the lower K%.
He threw four pitches at hitters all over 20% usage, and they were all very effective pitches in their own right. Hitters just couldn’t do anything loud against anything but the four-seamer, and even those numbers we can deal with no problem.
I don’t think we need to use many words on Alcantara, he’s a pretty easy guy to rank as a bonafide ace. Here’s the pitch FX stuff though just for fun:
Huge velocity, great movement, everything just works very well. He’s probably the safest ace of the bunch, to me only Gerrit Cole rivals him in that category. You could argue that he’s a step behind in those K/9 or K% leagues we mentioned - but yeah let’s wrap this up and rank Sandy where he should be.
Comps/RankArounds: Shane McClanahan, Dylan Cease
Pablo Lopez
Lopez’s season felt really disappointing while we were in it, but he finished with plenty of positives:
32 GS, 180 IP, 3.75 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 23.6% K%, 7.2% BB%, 14% SwStr%, 29.4% CSW%
I’m pretty surprised to see the numbers being this strong, it really felt like he had a pretty bad year. I mean a 3.75 ERA isn’t what you’re wanting from one of your top 3 fantasy starters, but it didn’t kill you either.
Some 2021 → 2022 stuff:
K%: 27.6% → 23.7%
BB%: 6.0% → 7.1%
SwStr%: 13.1% → 14.0%
CSW%: 29.1% → 29.4%
GB%: 47.0% → 47.1%
Brl%: 7.4% → 9.0%
So the K% came way down while the SwStr% got better and was one of the better marks in the league (it was top 20 in the league when filtering to 25+ GS).
The arsenal stuff:
The changeup is his only really great pitch, but he brings in four other solid pitches with it. He traded some sinkers/cutters for four-seamers in 2022, and maybe that was a bad decision. I have always really liked that Lopez has all three of those fastball variations, and I think that keeps his floor pretty high.
The best part of the 2022 season for Lopez was that he stayed healthy all year. Making 32 starts and getting over 180 innings is a huge vote of confidence for him, as that was a big issue for him prior.
I have been long been in on Lopez, and I think I’ll probably be there again next year.
Comps/RankArounds: Tarik Skubal
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