Miami Marlins: Get to know your team’s July upgrade

The Miami Marlins will likely be sellers at the trade deadline. It’s time to get to know LHP Adam Conley, who your team will probably be trading for in July to upgrade its bullpen.

It’s not a stretch to say the Miami Marlins are going to be bad in 2020 but that doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting in a number of ways. This brings us to lefty reliever Adam Conley. Normally, you wouldn’t get excited about a pitcher with a 6.53 ERA who totaled -0.4 fWAR last season, but Conley is an exception.

Relievers are volatile commodities year to year and Conley wasn’t great in 2019. That being said there’s a lot to like about Conley and if he puts it together in 2020, teams will be beating down the Marlins’ door to trade for him. Conley’s got some exciting traits that separate him from every other reliever.

To start, Conley throws really hard. His average fastball velocity is a blistering 95.3 MPH which is 15th best among all LHPs in baseball. What’s more is that pitch has some of the best horizontal movement, getting 13.6 inches of break which is 5.8 more than average. That pitch only has an average spin rate, nevertheless, Conley’s fastball is a weapon.

Conley’s second best pitch is a changeup that matches up well with his fastball and he throws it 17% of the time. By horizontal movement, his changeup is also an above average offering as it has 16.3 inches of break. Conley’s slider is a low spin offering he can throw for a strike or to the back foot of a righty hitter. It’s his best pitch by expected wOBA at a lowly .212.

Even though Conley has elite velocity and two solid off speed pitches, the three pitches aren’t working together as well as they could. If you look at the heat maps for his fastball, slider, and changeup, you can see that there isn’t a ton of cross over between pitches. This allows hitters to zero in and identify what the pitch will be depending on the location. With more zone overlap on each of his pitches, especially with his fastball and changeup since they have similar horizontal movement, this would fools hitters and lead to better results.

Conley has elite stuff and if he puts it together he’s going to be a highly sought after commodity. Relievers often times come out of nowhere to have monster seasons and end up on contenders. With spring training here, the Miami Marlins should make some tweaks to Conley’s pitch plan and by July they’ll have the top reliever on the trade market similar to what the Padres had in Brad Hand years ago.