December Recap: How Have the Miami Marlins Changed?

Along with Kemp, Marlins manager Don Mattingly also has history with recent relief pitching acquisition Yimi Garcia.

A five-year major league veteran, Garcia has pitched in 165 career contests, including a career-high 64 last year. His metrics are undeniable, with a 0.866 WHIP accrued over a 62 1/3 inning sample in 2019, along with 66 whiffs and a 3.61 ERA.

Garcia’s another piece that could positively impact the Marlins bullpen in the short-term, to the tune of possibly 1.5 WAR. That’s now 11.5 wins better than last year, but there’s one more piece to the puzzle that the Marlins are building this December.

In the rule 5 draft, the Marlins collected Sterling Sharp from the Washington Nationals. A six-foot-three right hander out of Drury College (the same institution that produced recent Marlins product Trevor Richards), Sharp has played four seasons of minor-league ball in the National system.

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Sharp is 25-21 with a 3.71 ERA, starting in 69 of his 75 career appearances. He’s struck out 290 in 378 1/3 innings of work, with a 1.327 WHIP. As he’s a rule 5 pick, Miami must keep him on the major league roster or risk losing him back to Washington.

Sharp is a largely unknown commodity, without a projection on Baseball Reference. Since this is a Marlins-centric blog, I’m going to continue to be an optimist and say he’ll be worth 1.0 WAR.

Add it all up and we could be looking at a 70-win season for the Marlins in 2020. I know, that’s really nothing to “write home” about, but this team is getting to be more interesting by the day.