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.

The 2000 Miami Marlins- Transitioning Aces 

Coming in at number five are the 2000 model of the Miami Marlins, the inclusion of which should underscore for Marlin’s diehards just how rare an occurrence these 2017 circumstances are.

The 2000 group was headlined by Alex Fernandez, who after winning the NL Comeback Player of the Year award in the previous season, was unquestionably the most trusted pitcher in the rotation that broke camp in Vierra that spring.

Beloved son of the South Florida community, he was Mike Lowell before Mike Lowell regarding local appeal and was a driving force behind the 1997 World Championship team.

But he did suffer that famous injury in that 1997 postseason, did miss all of 1998, and did have to get shut down in September to rehab his refashioned shoulder. While Fernandez seemed confident, fears remained about well his arm could hold up. fears that proved too well founded when Fernandez was shut down in May, initially for two weeks, but for what would go on to the be the end of his career.

Fears that proved to well founded when Fernandez was shutdown in May, initially for two weeks, but for what would go on to be the end of his career.

Even his Opening Day start was marred by unwelcome news from Tallahassee, as yet another effort to solve the revenue problem that led to the dismantling of the 1997 champs was scuttled.

He would get the win that Opening Day start, though, and in one of my favorite bits of obscure Marlin’s trivia, ended up winning consecutive Opening Day starts against former 1997 rotation mates. Fernandez beat Al Leiter and the Mets to kick off 1999 and dispatched the recently traded Livan Hernandez and the Giants to start 2000.

The rest of the rotation projected to be a group of middling to poor also-rans like Vladimir Nunez or Jesus Sanchez, uninspiring journeymen like Reid Cornelius, with relatively to entirely untested prospects like A.J. Burnett and Brad Penny waiting in the wings. Paired with another abysmal overall record in 1999 and the trade of former World Series MVP Hernandez the previous July, confidence in this group wasn’t particularly high.

Names of note so far excluded from this rundown are Ryan Dempster and Chuck Smith. Dempster would represent the Marlins in the 2000 All-Star Game, the one that was supposed to be played at Pro Player Stadium, and the completely unheralded Smith would go on to garner NL Rookie of the Year consideration.

However, it could be argued that Dempster’s performance was even more surprising. After all, he’d tallied double-digit starts in 1998 and 1999, with borderline-terrible results. Nobody was predicting a campaign that would break Kevin Brown’s franchise record for strikeouts in a season, a 209 K effort that would stand until this past August when Jose Fernandez claimed the title.

By season’s end, the Marlins had their ace for the foreseeable future. But at the start? Only a bevy of question marks, led by a wing and a prayer hopeful.

The 2008 Marlins- The “Ace” That Couldn’t Win Even If He Could, And Couldn’t 

Thirteen starts into Dontrelle Willis’ big-league career, the D-train had punched his ticket to the 2003 All-Star Game. Miguel Cabrera had hit three home runs, including a game-winner in his very first game. Both would go on to lead the Marlins to their second world championship in their rookie years.

Thirteen starts into his big league career, Andrew Miller had posted a record of 5-5 and a 5.63 ERA. Still touted as a high-value prospect though, the jewel coming over in “The Trade” that sent the two faces of the franchise to the Tigers for a boatload of prospects, the bar was set pretty high.

Seldom would he ever be in danger of showing signs he could clear that bar.

At season’s start though, Miller was greeted with that bizarre mix of equal parts cynicism and high expectation that have greeted many a Marlins roster move during the Jeffrey Loria era. Performing well wouldn’t cut it- he had to be great, and great wasn’t expected.

The Opening Day start went to Mark Hendrickson, a decision based much more on MLB tenure than a successful track record. His best ERA mark in the past five seasons was 4.21, and the six earned runs he surrendered in the opener did nothing to convince fans a pitching mechanics epiphany was forthcoming.

As for the rest of the rotation…it was an ugly story. Hendrickson would finish with a 5.45 ERA, and Miller was worse.

Only one of the Marlins top four finishers in games started would post an ERA under 4.00.

Fans finding themselves confused over how this could have been possible given the fact that franchise stalwarts like Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Anibal Sanchez were all still with the team are blessed with not having to remember the horror show that was the lost season of 2007.

The above trio, along with Dontrelle and Scott Olsen, were the envy of the league in 2006 when all five members of the starting rotation won 10 or more games. But Johnson, Nolasco, and Sanchez all suffered season-ending injuries in their sophomore seasons and did so early. Only Nolasco would be healthy enough to make the 2008 Opening Day Roster, with Johnson and Sanchez not expected back until midseason.

Olsen came into 2008 after an abysmal year where he was lucky to keep his ERA under 6.00, Willis was off to Detroit, and Nolasco was anything but a household name yet. Of that celebrated 2006 staff, he had easily performed the worst of the five, hitting his double-digit wins with a .500 record and 4.82 ERA. So precious few had the expectation he was about to become a rotation cornerstone.

But if you have four infielders club 25 HRs or more, it turns out pitching doesn’t matter very much. The 2008 team was probably as close as the Marlins have come to making the playoffs since winning the 2003 title, and with Johnson and Sanchez returning as expected, the rotation improved significantly as the season progressed.

The 2013 Miami Marlins- The Year Everyone Was Upset Over A Good Firesale 

So to recap, entering 2008, Ricky Nolasco wasn’t Ricky Nolasco yet. Entering 2013, he was making his second Opening Day start with the team and was the club leader in both wins and strikeouts.

But 2008 was also the last time he had produced anything resembling a respectable ERA, and he’d lost more than he’d won for two years running.

The Spring Training injury carnage was so bad actually, the Marlins ended up having no choice but to rush their top prospect to the big leagues.

To be fair, some of these names were only there because of injuries to two of the club’s more promising pitchers in Henderson Alvarez and Nathan Eovaldi.

The Spring Training injury carnage was so bad that the Marlins ended up having no choice but to rush their top prospect to the big leagues.

Some kid named Jose Fernandez.

So yes, by season’s end, the Fish had discovered their next ace, along with a seemingly solid No. 2 option in Alvarez and a legit innings eater in Tom Koehler. In early April though? Expectations really couldn’t have been much lower.

The 2017 Miami Marlins- Expectations Make A Difference 

The 2000 and 2013 rotations highlighted earlier on this list shared two things in common. For one, they both still contained what we’ll call a poor man’s ace. Somebody who at least had a track record with the organization of doing something constructive.

More importantly, though, both of those teams were blissfully free from the burden of expectation. Modest improvement was hoped for in one case, the apocalypse was expected in the other.

Yet this team is genuinely expected by the organization to contend for a playoff spot.

Because the only member of it who enjoys any kind of consistent track record with the team is Koehler, who despite actually being very similar to Nolasco in many respects, has never enjoyed that same level of trust from the fans.

Two members of the rotation are completely new, three if you count a Wei-Yin Chen that missed the majority of his maiden voyage with the club due to injury. No one in it has ever put together a season, for any team, which showed them to be capable of being anything more than a good No. 3 arm.

Yet this team is genuinely expected by the organization to contend for a playoff spot. The payroll has never been higher. Even most of the national pundits that discredit that notion do so based on organizational depth and Giancarlo Stanton‘s penchant for fluky injuries. If this team stays healthy, it’s supposed to win.

That’s got to be new ground for a team expected to do something with their season other than developing players. Definitely for the Marlins, and probably most teams, period.