Miami Marlins: 3 potential trade targets to help the bullpen

The first half of the Miami Marlins season was on that exceeded everyone’s expectations and in part the pitching staff was the key factor. Now the impact the first half has had leaves the second half in question, due to the use of the pitching staff.  Most starting pitchers in the first half, aside from Sandy Alcantara, pitched around five or six innings at the most.

Manager Skip Schumaker is partly to blame both in good and bad ways about the current state of the Marlins pen. Skip has limited his starting pitchers and put them on pitch counts for at least three of the five pitchers.  Most notoriously, skip has kept the young rookie Eury Perez to a very tight pitch count around 80 pitches, which led to him exiting most games in the 5th and some later in the year in the 6th.  

In addition Braxton Garrett is also on a similar pitch count and is averaging around five innings per appearance.  He is most often pulled before the fourth time through the order, to which some fans cheer the move for analytics sake but now we are seeing the impact.  When you have two pitchers who leave the game and need four innings out of the bullpen each time, unless you have a very good long relief pitcher, you’re going  to hurt.  Now at the deadline, it is imperative for the Marlins to trade for pitching, both a starter to eat innings and a bullpen arm to help the suffering pen, so we take a look at 3 potential candidates.