Miami Marlins: Team preview and prediction for 2020 season
A rebuilding Miami Marlins team faces an uphill battle in one of the most highly-contested divisions in baseball. Can they crash the party?
The Miami Marlins certainly aren’t on anyone’s radar to make an impact in 2020, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see a young team have some success with an exciting pitching staff and one of the best managers in the game still at the helm.
Will the Marlins surprise us all this year and pull off some miracle run to win the division? Probably not. But 2020 will be the year we start to see the wheels turning in a positive direction for this organization.
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The Marlins are a very weird franchise. They were powerhouses in the early 2000s, but have always struggled with poor attendance being a Florida team.
There was the whole controversy over their new stadium that nobody really wanted and how it was paid for. And on top of that, player management has just been all over the place from everything that went down with Jose Fernandez‘s accident to the stunning trades of Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, JT Realmuto, and Dee Gordon all out of nowhere.
Now they have Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada working on things behind the scenes in the front office along with Don Mattingly in the dugout, so you would have to think this organization will be a Yankees 2.0 in a matter of years.
It’s just a very peculiar franchise that has a knack for being really high or really low. So, until they get back to being a top dog, I believe we’re going to see them finish at the bottom of the NL East once again.
Miami Marlins: 2020 Preview and Prediction
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to like about this team. They brought on a slew of veteran outfielders this offseason to round out the roster like Matt Kemp, Corey Dickerson, and Matt Joyce, but at the same time, Isan Diaz is an exciting player who will be the everyday second baseman.
Jonathan Villar was really good for the Orioles last year and now it looks like they’ll move him into center field. Brian Anderson is a versatile player with a high ceiling that the team loves. Jorge Alfaro is quietly becoming a power-house at the dish. And on top of that, we still have some younger guys to look forward to in the outfield such as Monte Harrison, Lewis Brinson, and Victor Victor Mesa.
Is this a great lineup? No. But it has a good mix of younger guys and vets, and I think we’ll see a significant uptick in their power numbers this year with Joyce, Dickerson, and Diaz from the left side of the plate as well as Jesus Aguilar, Garrett Cooper, Anderson, and Alfaro from the right. It’s definitely a better group than last year.
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But what really excites me about this team is their pitching staff, particularly with Sandy Alcantara at the top of the rotation. Alcantara was brought in a couple of years ago from St. Louis for Marcell Ozuna, so even though the Marlins incited their own purging, they landed their future ace.
Alcantara was an All Star last year and this is a guy who is quickly establishing himself as a force in this league. One thing that is holding him back right now is his command and lack of strikeouts he’s getting. But with an upper-90s fastball that will regularly touch triple digits and a put-away slider that can get up into the 90s, there’s no doubt in my mind this is a guy with a tremendously high upside. I would draw comparisons to Lucas Giolito who had similar problems with walks but at the same time, he had number one stuff and we saw the year he had in 2019 when he made his adjustments- two very similar players, Giolito and Alcantara, and Alcantara has the capability to be even better.
Miami Marlins: 2020 Preview and Prediction
As for the rest of the Marlin rotation, we have Caleb Smith who was very good for this team last year, we have Jose Urena supposed to get moved back into the rotation, we have two young pitchers who have shown a lot of promise in Pablo Lopez and Jordan Yamamoto, and we have two big prospects waiting in the wings in Nick Neidert and Sixto Sanchez.
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Smith has a very impressive spin rate on his fastball which gets him a bunch of strikeouts even though he’s about mid-range velocity. Yamamoto is in the same ballpark as an even slower tosser but with an impressive rate of spin and ability to get strikeouts. As for Urena, it’s going to be interesting to see what he does. He’s been given another chance at the rotation after being moved to the pen at the end of last season, and before that he was at the top of their rotation. So, Urena is certainly a guy who’s a bit all over the place right now and is looking to settle in somewhere.
Concerning the Marlin bullpen, they brought on some solid veteran arms in Brad Boxberger and Brandon Kintzler, both of whom are lively trade candidates if they have good seasons. Adam Conley is also in the mix to be traded even as a Marlins homegrown. There are some impressive arms in the Marlins’ pen, but this season will most definitely be about developing the starters.
This is a team that already traded away two of its better young guns in Zac Gallen and Trevor Richards and is now looking to regain that edge at the starter position for the future of their franchise.
I have the Marlins finishing at the bottom of the NL East once again (65-97 record before the delayed opening), so I had/have them improving on last season. This is a team that is going to do a fair amount of winning. This will be a situation where you know they’re a bad team, but you look up and they’ve actually had an impressive month to your utter amazement.
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That’s in large part due to Don Mattingly in the dugout. He was an under-the-radar Manager of the Year candidate last season, and I would expect nothing less out of him this season. The Marlins are going to flash at times with the young talent they have, so be ready for them to play the role of spoiler for somebody in 2020.