Miami Marlins: Faceless, Aceless, Five Most Lackluster Rotations

That the Miami Marlins are entering the 2017 MLB season without a true ace in their rotation is no secret. They have had lackluster rotations many times. Let’s take a look at five of them.

The loss of Jose Fernandez was one of the biggest stories in all of baseball to end last year, and shaped the entire Miami Marlins‘ off-season. The club worked to best address the subtraction of that much talent by crafting a superb bullpen to back up a less than stellar starting five.

What may be a secret, though, is just how rare an occurrence this is for the soon to be twenty-five-year-old franchise.

With only six winning seasons and two playoff berths to show for themselves during that time, it would be easy to assume the Marlins have routinely lacked a No. 1 guy; someone that gave fans and the clubhouse confidence that every fifth day they were going to be in a position to win. How could they have had more than a handful of seasons with a pitcher of that caliber leading the way, with so lackluster a track record?

Pretty easily, now that you mention it.

They had two years of Kevin Brown, five years of being led by a World Series MVP, five years of Josh Johnson, and six years with a National League Rookie of the Year. That’s eighteen years worth of elite talent setting the tone.

Put another way, fourteen seasons of Marlins baseball saw the team enter the season with a starting pitcher in the rotation who had played in an All-Star Game as a Marlin, with an additional four seeing a member of the club earn the honor that year. That leaves seven seasons unaccounted for, but three of those had 1997 heroes Livan Hernandez (1998) or Alex Fernandez (1999, 2000) take the mound on Opening Day.

So, it is rare air we’re breathing right now with this Edinson Volquez-led quintet leading us into the 2017 campaign. Depending on your perspective, either as many as eleven or as few as four have brought anything close to this sense of uncertainty.

With that in mind, let’s take a trip down memory lane, and rank the five most lackluster rotations in franchise history. Again, this is based on perception entering the season, not necessarily final results. That means if it were not for Dontrelle Willis, the 2006 staff might have topped this list, even if it might have arguably been the second best staff in team history by the end of the season.

By the same token, that means the 2007 staff was not considered for an instant, even if they did end up being excruciatingly disappointing by season’s end. This is also about aces at the end of the day, and not necessarily the rotation overall.

Let’s dive in.