Trawling for Wins: Mariners vs. Marlins Series Preview
The Mariners return home for a weekend of fishing.
The Mariners just completed a 6-3 road trip, won their fifth consecutive series, and thanks to a late-inning comeback in Sacramento, enter this weekend tied for first in the AL West. The vibes, as they say, are good. This stretch of great play has been marked by some pretty impressive offensive output — Seattle has scored 5.4 runs per game during its last 15 games. Now, the M’s will return home for an odd five-game homestand beginning with a set against the Marlins.
After a surprise postseason appearance in 2023 and subsequent first-round exit out of the playoffs, it looked like the Marlins were finally on the rise. Unfortunately, injuries decimated their pitching staff the next year — ‘23 Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara was the biggest loss — and they decided to reset their roster, again. Alcantara is healthy again, but the young pitching that provided so much hope for this franchise has mostly either busted, been shipped out of town, or is currently injured. There are some glimpses of the future to be seen around the roster, but they’re very much in the “throw anything at the wall and see what sticks” phase of their rebuild.
The Marlins lineup is largely made up of cast offs from other organizations that they’ve gathered over the last few years of selling off. They’ve cobbled together a collection of flawed but promising position players, though none of them stick out as franchise pillars so far. Xavier Edwards broke out last year using his elite bat-to-ball skills and speed to set the table for the rest of the lineup. Jesús Sánchez is the closest thing the Marlins have to a veteran presence because he’s the only player with more than two full years of service time in their lineup (he has 3.5 years of service). Miami did just call up Agustín Ramírez this week; he’s their top prospect and the prize of the Jazz Chisholm Jr. deal last summer.
Probable Pitchers
Cal Quantrill signed a minor league deal with the Marlins this offseason after a pretty terrible season in Colorado last year. All the injuries on their staff have given him an opportunity to show that he can rediscover the success he enjoyed in Cleveland in 2021-22. Things are not going very well. He’s walked more batters than he’s struck out, everything opposing batters are putting in play is falling for hits, and his ERA is nearly three runs higher than his FIP. He really expanded his repertoire last year, adding a splitter and slider, but neither pitch is all that effective. A wider pitch mix might keep batters off balance, but when none of the pitches have much quality, it doesn’t really matter all that much.
Like Quantrill, Connor Gillispie has leveraged the injuries in the Marlins rotation into an opportunity to try and stick in the big leagues. He was drafted back in 2019 by the Orioles but has spent the last two years bouncing around three different organizations. The Marlins claimed him off waivers from the Braves in January and he’s now getting some real run as a starter for them. His underlying numbers are a little better than Quantrill’s — at least he’s struck out 2.6 batters for every walk he’s allowed — but his ERA is still almost seven. He doesn’t really have a standout pitch from a stuff perspective either; his sweeper looks pretty but it doesn’t get many swings and misses, and while his fastball possesses elite ride, it doesn’t have the velocity to be that effective.
Max Meyer is in the middle of an early-season breakout. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2022 and struggled upon his return last year, but he entered spring training with a revamped repertoire and some extra velocity. Those changes to his pitch mix — a new sweeper and a sinker to go along with a 95 mph heater — have helped him increase both his swing-and-miss and his groundball rate. Through his first five starts of the season, he’s struck out more than a third of the batters he’s faced while generating a 57.7% groundball rate; his ERA and FIP are unsurprisingly phenomenal at 2.10 and 2.39, respectively. He’s always had a high prospect pedigree but that was mostly thanks to his outstanding slider. This is the first time as a professional he’s had a fully realized repertoire to work with.
The Big Picture:
Thanks to that ninth-inning walk-off victory last night, the Athletics won their series against the Rangers and pushed Texas into a tie atop the AL West with the Mariners. And don’t look now, but the Astros just finished off a 5-1 homestand against the Padres and Blue Jays and are only half a game back in the standings. Texas travels to San Francisco this weekend while Houston heads to Kansas City.