Cheap inning eater for the Miami Marlins available by trade

It's not a secret that the Miami Marlins are looking to hire a new manager. We even have an idea of how some candidates have been doing. Once Peter Bendix hires a new manager and hires some other people for the vast amount of the team's open spots. The Fish however also need to improve the roster. At the very least it might make sense to add some inning eaters...

The Miami Marlins need an inning-eating starting pitcher.

The 2025 season will see the Miami Marlins have an embarrassment of riches in the rotation. That said, many of those pitchers will be coming back from injury. This means that they can't be counted on to get that many innings. They will also likely be on inning limits.

Specifically, I'm of course talking about the likes of Sandy Alcantara, Jesus Luzardo, Eury Perez and even Braxton Garrett. It makes absolute perfect sense for Bendix to bring in some inning-eaters into the mix. An interesting wrinkle here is that a lot of those pitchers need spots, so it wouldn't make sense for the team to take away their spots. It's also complicating matters by bringing in pitchers who will need secure spots.

This brings us to the idea of bringing in an innings-eater, who can easily be dropped from the rotation when needed. This brings us to the St. Louis Cardinals and their off-season plans. They're planning to cut payroll, so they will likely be willing to move SP Miles Mikolas.

Miles Mikolas is a free agent after this season, who is making $18.5 million next season. St. Louis will probably be willing to pay half of his salary. He also is bad enough, that his value is pretty low. He pitched in 202.1 innings in 2022, 201.1 innings in 2023 and finally 171.2 innings in 2024. His ERA's for those seasons were: 3.29, 4.78 and 5.35. He doesn't get a lot of strikeouts, but he has tremendous control and so very low walk rates.

The Miami Marlins could use an inning eater and Miles Mikolas might be able to solve this issue.