News on a former Miami Marlins player may frustrate you

Newly signed Miami Marlins starting pitcher Johnny Cueto has been frustrating to watch, and is injured for a while. That by itself is bad enough, but ace Sandy Alcantara has been having issues as well. What can make all of this even worse? Pablo Lopez producing a 1.73 ERA/2.71 FIP for the Minnesota Twins at the same time...and Minnesota now extending him for 4 years/$73.5 million. Should the fans be upset that The Fish didn't extend him instead of trading him?

The Miami Marlins were right to trade Pablo Lopez.

The Miami Marlins may not be the most high-spending team to say the least, but trading Pablo Lopez was the right decision. To start with, he was traded for Luis Arraez, who had a higher WAR last season and has a higher one now. Arraez is the better player and so the trade was an upgrade for The Fish. Furthermore, let's look at how The Fish's rotation looks...

I think that it's safe to admit that signing Johnny Cueto hasn't quite worked out. Sandy Alcantara may be struggling, but he won the NL Cy Young award last season, and his advanced metrics indicate that he just had bad luck this season. Jesus Luzardo has a 3.32 ERA/3.12 FIP in 18 games and 100.1 innings pitched. He also has a 1.93 ERA/3.00 FIP so far this season, so Sandy and Luzardo is a great start to the rotation.

Trevor Rogers is coming off of a down year, but was phenomenal in 2021 and has just bounced back recently. The fact is that he had more team control than Pablo did when he was traded, and trading Trevor would've also been "selling low". It would also have been foolish to give up on Trevor altogether. Edward Cabrera had a 3.01 ERA in 71.2 innings pitched last season, so he wasn't going anywhere either. Braxton Garrett would've been better than Cueto, but not Pablo. This implies that Pablo could've had Cueto's spot, but what about super prospect Eury Perez?

Pablo Lopez also had a career 3.94 ERA/3.77 FIP with 8.6 K/9 and 2.5 BB/9 for the Miami Marlins. He wasn't a top of the rotation starter and he was injury-prone on top of that. It made little sense to extend him at the time. Pablo is doing great for Minnesota, but it's only the beginning of the season and we don't know how he'll do for the next four years.