
2. Trevor Rogers – Miami Marlins SP
After a fairly disappointing 2020 season in which he made his MLB debut, Trevor Rogers is quickly emerging as a potential massive piece of the Miami Marlins future rotation.
As mentioned previously, the 23-year old LHP made his MLB debut during the 2020 MLB season. Rogers however struggled posting a 6.11 ERA through 7 starts, and showed numerous areas of potential improvement.
Rogers came to the MLB as a highly-touted pitching prospect within the Marlins system. Drafted out of high school in the 2017 MLB Draft, Rogers displayed a plus fastball and changeup with potential to make batters miss often. Rogers flashed those pitches often during the limited 2020 season giving Marlins’ fans reason to hope next season.
Now in 2021, Rogers has been one of the top pitchers in baseball so far during the 2021 season in nearly the same sample size which we saw from him a year ago.
Rogers has gone 3-1 with a 1.29 ERA through his first five starts while sporting an impressive 1.000 WHIP and an insane 12.2 K/9. Now while it is unlikely the young left-hander sustains those numbers throughout a 162-game season, especially nearly cutting his H/9 allowed in half from a year ago, it is impressive to see what he is doing so far.
Rogers will still need to improve on a few areas, including his 3.7 career BB/9, but the stuff is obviously there to be a special piece of the Marlins future rotation.
If Rogers continues to show this level of improvement, Miami has one of the better strikeout starting pitchers in baseball in the back-end of their rotation.