Why Sandy Alcantara is the perfect chance for Miami Marlins to do right thing, once

If you're a fan of the Miami Marlins, you've probably spent a fair amount of time getting more satisfaction out of your fantasy baseball team than your real life team.

So let's talk in fantasy terms. You may be familiar with the phrase "hero-RB" if you also dabble in fantasy football, or to put it in fantasy baseball terms, "hero-SP". Heck, if we fudge the exact rules of the approach a little bit, we can even turn back the clock and go with the "Marmol strategy" to make this point. Bottom-line, you pay up for one elite option at a position...and then go cheap the rest of the way. One big name, and then you figure it out with the rest.

The Miami Marlins need to go hero-SP in their team build...and hold on tight to Sandy Alcantara.

In some ways, the team has already taken this advice. Alcantara is still a Marlin after all, and is certainly a hero among the rest of their healthy starting pitchers. There's probably even a whole connected metaphor we could string out about maximizing asset value and drafting by keeping Alcantara to flip him for that boatload of prospects.

But this isn't the "trade Sandy" article. This is about building a long-term, successful franchise though. For multiple seasons. Multiple seasons that matter to the South Florida baseball fan. Which as tempting as that aforementioned boatload of prospects might be, is just not something I think the Miami Marlins can pull off if they move on from Sandy Alcantara. At the very least, if they do so at some point during the 2025 season.

Why not? Because it's what every beleaguered Marlins fan, and every cynical baseball analyst, is expecting them to do. Waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop. It's been the Marlins MO for over twenty-five years. Always trade, never keep. Especially not when they become expensive. That was the "Marlins way" long before former Tampa Bay Rays GM Peter Bendix took up shop in Miami's front office as President of Baseball Operations, and it has absolutely been the "Rays way" of conducting business. It more than stands to reason to assume that approach will continue, and plenty of evidence already exists to suggest that it will.

However, the thing about the Rays getting away with that approach is that they were never gutted. Repeatedly gutted. Rays fans had never gone through a fraction of the suffering that Marlins fans did, and then all of sudden, the Rays way worked. Repeatedly worked. Fans had proof of concept, and the Rays had their trust. Trust is earned, not given.

Without taking a long trip down Marlins memory lane, let's just say that Marlins fans aren't exactly the blank slate that Rays fans were.

No, Marlins fans, at least in the numbers that Bruce Sherman wants to see start turning out, are going to need to be given something here. Proof of concept on their end that once, just once, the Marlins can do the popular thing. What fans view as the right thing. That just once, the Marlins can keep a player in Miami for as long as possible.

Understandably, especially for a low-payroll team, it has to be the right kind of player that you make such an exception for. Alcantara has already proven deserving of that mantle. He's the unquestioned leader of the team. High character. High work ethic. Highly productive. Loved by fans and teammates alike. He's also well on his way to immortalizing himself in the franchise record books. Historical greatness can be saved for another article, but he's more than earned the opportunity to claim those franchise milestones. As have his fans.

After a season or two of the Marlins turning in some of that elusive proof of concept that the Bendix/Rays way is working here in South Florida, perhaps moving Alcantara does become forgivable. Do it before things even have a chance to get off the ground though, and a critical mass of fans will likely only end up seeing red. Florida Panthers red, if they aren't seeing that already.

Even if the Marlins did choose to hold on to Alcantara another season and a half before flipping him though, the question of whether or not the Marlins will ever keep someone would still remain. The same gripes. The same resentment. The same mistrust.

Keep him though? Even extend him, or at least make an offer to do so? In the worst case, exercise his 2027 option, and then be willing to risk losing him in free agency? Okay, that last one might be pushing the limits of rational thought, even if I do think the Marlins would gain far more in fan goodwill than they'd lose on not getting that boatload of prospects, one of which might grow up to be good as Sandy Alcantara one day.

Should the Marlins do that, keep the popular player just one time, everything else becomes much more acceptable. Fans would feel far safer embracing the team knowing that there is at least one familar face that will always be there to cheer for, and be worthy of those cheers. Just as Jose Ramirez continues to keep on keeping on for the Guardians, and as Bobby Witt looks to be a lifer for the Royals. It also affords the Marlins front office a lifetime's worth of protection against all the arrows and epithets some fans might still hurl, and against any hard questions MLB might still ask.

What do you mean we don't spend money? What do you mean we don't keep players long-term? Just look at Sandy.

There really is even a bit of financial logic to keeping Alcantara. If the overall policy is going to be one of keeping costs low, of maximizing value and continually churning the roster, an Alcantara extension becomes a financial buffer to build around. Just as Marlins fans aren't a blank slate for blindly accepting the best intentions of the Marlins front office, no blank slate exists on the part of MLB or the Marlins organization when it comes to having the competitive spirit of the game in mind when it comes to player payroll. The Marlins organization is a repeat offender in this regard, after all.

Obviously, the kind of approach to team building the Marlins are pursuing requires a highly clinical and focused degree of discipline. Keeping Alcantara for the long haul would seemingly fly in the face of this. However, it is possible to spend some money and be smart. After all, Andrew Friedman brought his Rays ways to the Dodgers, and just look how that turned out. The Marlins will never go that route, but there's no reason they can't afford to continue their historic trend of outspending the Rays themselves. They just have to spend smarter.

And there's no smarter investment the Miami Marlins could make than making sure Sandy Alcantara stays in a Marlins uniform for a long time to come.