Miami Marlins Chronicles: Kyle Barraclough’s Struggles

Kyle Barraclough began the season gangbusters, and by June 30th had allowed 10 hits in his first 36 1/3 innings of work.

That workload resulted in a 0.99 ERA and an opposing slashline of .085/.212/.162 through June 30th. He allowed two home runs through the first three months of the season for the Miami Marlins.

…and that’s the same amount of home runs he surrendered in his last appearance. To refresh your memory, that’s when he lost his sixth game of the season (against zero wins) by allowing back-to-back home runs to Michael Conforto and Todd Frazier in a walkoff 4-3 New York Mets win on September 13th.

Barraclough’s fall from grace has been precipitous and jarring. Over his last 19 appearances, he’s allowed opposing batters to slash .400/.517/.700 over 87 plate appearances. Although he’s struck out 16 batters over that 14 2/3 innings, he’s also walked 15 and allowed 28 hits for a WHIP of 2.932. That’s not only not good, it’s not even average – or even garden variety bad. It’s been tragic.

Fans of Barraclough and the Miami Marlins have to hold their breath when Don Mattingly calls on Barraclough since the beginning of July. This happened just after Barraclough’s best month of his career. To recap, Barraclough had earned the closer’s role from then-struggling Brad Ziegler. Barraclough walked two and allowed one hit over 12 scoreless innings through the month of June, notching seven saves and striking out 12 over 12 appearances. He was named the National League relief pitcher of the month. I don’t know about you, but I thought he was slighted when he was left off the all-star team.

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Since Barraclough’s well documented troubles began, Mattingly declared “closer by committee,” although he’s relied more on Drew Steckenrider when the Miami Marlins are in a now-rare save situation. Also collecting saves over that time have been Adam Conley, Javy Guerra, and Brett Graves. In the meantime, although Barraclough publicly stated that he was not suffering from an injury, the Marlins placed him on the disabled list with “lower-back stiffness” on August 10th.

Reactivated by the Miami Marlins on August 24th, Barraclough has played in five games since his return covering three innings. He’s allowed five runs on six hits and three walks over that time, also striking out three batters.

It’s become clear that Barraclough is merely missing his spots, and major league level hitters are picking up on that. The Miami Marlins would do well to keep him out of high-leverage situations for the time being, and reevaluate his role with the team during 2019 Spring Training.

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