How Jake Arrieta Could Have Changed Miami Marlins History

If the Miami Marlins had traded for Arrieta and his 5.3 WAR in 2014, do they have a winning record that season?

Despite Rosenthal’s assertion that Miami was “out of contention and headed for a 71-win season”, that’s not quite fair to that 2014 Marlins squad. For one, he’s wrong: Miami won 77 games that year. The Fish were above .500 as late as August 19th, and chasing .500 all July. Fueled by Giancarlo Stanton‘s MVP campaign, that scrappy team had designs on contending for a playoff spot that season. Unfortunately, that MVP campaign ended with a Mike Fiers fastball to the face. But were it not for that pitch, Miami might have been a .500 team even without Arrieta. With him? Seems even more likely 82 wins would have been reach.

Which then sets up an even bigger what if the following season. If manager Mike Redmond had had a winning season in his back pocket in May of 2015, does he get fired that quickly when the team fell flat on its face out of the gate? Or more to the point, particularly if Arrieta had been there to win two or three more games, is Mike Redmond fired at all?

Injuries played a massive role in throwing the 2015 club off the rails. That, and pretty lousy pitching outside of Jose Fernandez, who only returned from injury himself at the midseason point. More on that in a moment. Firing Redmond for what was believed to be a clubhouse full of underperforming stars was one thing. Firing him once those injuries to Stanton and Dee Gordon popped up the following month would have been something else entirely.

Especially since the replacement in 2015 was Dan Jennings, the Marlins GM. A nice enough guy whose highest level of management experience to that point was a high school baseball team. Yes, if you’re late to the Miami Marlins party, that is a thing that actually happened. You don’t make that move unless you absolutely have to make it.

Back to the lousy pitching though, as we might be guilty of getting ahead of ourselves with the manager what if. The entire story of the Miami Marlins transaction page from 2014 to 2016 is the exciting tale of trying to find a suitable No. 2 to pair with Fernandez atop the Marlins pitching rotation. This recently unearthed Arrieta for Realmuto deal might have well been the first attempt to do so, but was hardly the last.

Sadly, it’s the only attempt I’ve ever heard tell of that might have worked out. Do the Marlins trade decent enough Anthony DeSclafani for abysmal Mat Latos if Arrieta is on the team already? Probably not. Going back to 2014, do they trade former first round pick Colin Moran for Jarred Cosart? Not a chance, although it is possible he might have been one of those other prospects going to Chicago. Then again, what would Chicago want with a third baseman if they were just embarking on the Kris Bryant era? As a result, that’s two dumb trades off the books, and a possibly deeper farm system, by the end of 2015.

So with that, let’s turn the page to 2016, and ask…