Depth Chart

4. Anibal Sanchez

Sanchez impressed Marlins fans last season by being the “last man standing” amidst a slew of injuries and changes to the starting rotation late in the season. While Josh Johnson and Ricky Nolasco succumbed to injury and skipped their September starts, Sanchez remained to anchor the rotation as the team’s best pitcher remaining. He threw an impressive 195 innings, a career high by a large margin, and was able to display some of the gifts that impressed the Marlins in his first go-around in the majors in 2006.

Of course, Sanchez is best known for his injury history rather than his pitching record. After recording a 2006 season with a 2.83 ERA and a no-hitter, Sanchez missed the majority of the next three seasons recovering from a torn right labrum. In 2007, he was sent to the minors and went on the DL for the labrum surgery. In 2008, he stayed on the DL for the majority of the season still recovering from the labrum surgery. In 2009, when it was expected that Sanchez was fully recovered, he suffered a right shoulder strain that was reaggrevated and once again kept him out for significant time.

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Today we continue our trek through the Marlins’ starting rotation. After going over the Ace and the Enigma, we reach the original Enigma, the Papa Bear of Enigmas so to speak, newly acquired right-hander Javier Vazquez. I called Vazquez the Papa Bear of Enigmas because he is one of the higher profile pitchers who have underperformed their peripherals over their career; his 4.26 career ERA pales in comparison to his significantly better career 3.93 FIP. At this point, with over 2600 innings of work, I’d trust that 4.26 career ERA a bit more than his 3.93 FIP, but the true talent should still be somewhere in between those marks. Of course, this season the question this Papa Bear of Enigmas is facing isn’t about that difference in ERA but about a far larger discrepancy from the 2010 season.

Depth Chart

3. Javier Vazquez

Vazquez signed a one-year deal worth $7M with the Marlins this offseason, looking to bounce back from what was a career-worst year in his second stint with the New York Yankees. In 2010, the wheels all fell off for Vazquez, who suffered through 156 1/3 horrific innings with a 5.32 ERA and an ever worse 5.56 FIP. A lot of problems went into those numbers, including a drop to his second worst strikeout rate of his career, a career high walk rate, and an equally career high rate of home runs.

Some of that can be explained away with bad luck and Yankees Stadium. The Marlins are hoping that a move to the more spacious Sun Life Stadium will help decrease Vazquez’s 14.0 percent HR/FB rate, the second highest of his career. Unfortunately, much of the rest of that line can also be explained by a decreasing velocity. Vazquez sat about two miles per hour slower on his fastball all of last season, and according to some past pitchers who have done the same, that velocity isn’t likely to return.

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Depth Chart

2. Ricky Nolasco

I have labeled Nolasco “the Enigma” here for obvious reasons. Marlins fans are well aware of the tale of how Nolasco “broke out” in 2008, throwing 212 1/3 innings to the tune of a 3.52 ERA, only to follow that season up with one of the most perplexing pitching seasons of all time in 2009. Nolasco’s 185 innings of 5.06 ERA were astonishing not just because of the bad start which precipitated the season results (ERA over 9.00 into June) but also how drastically different that performance was to his strong 3.35 FIP, the lowest of his career. In 2010, more of the same problems persisted, with yet again a significant difference between Nolasco’s FIP and ERA.

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