Can Sandy Alcántara get right? Ahead of trade deadline, the baseball world waits and hopes

New York Times

4 days ago

The chatter is impossible for Sandy Alcántara to avoid, as much as he'd like to block it all out. He reads it on social media, sees what the national media says.
All the talk that he's not good anymore. That the Tommy John surgery broke him. That he's lost all his trade value. That he'll never be the same.
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'It's tough. You've got to be strong,' Alcántara said before a Miami Marlins game earlier this week. 'Watching people's comments, hearing people talk very bad about you. It's something that you have to not pay attention to. But I'm strong, man. I believe in myself.
'I know, one day, everything will change.'
It's been a brutal 2025 for Alcántara, the 2022 Cy Young winner who returned this season after missing last season rehabbing his elbow.
And while he's confident his 8.47 ERA will improve, his first start after making those comments was a lot more of the same. Four innings pitched on Wednesday in San Diego, six earned runs, four walks, seven hits and zero strikeouts for the first time in a start since April 2019.
Another bad outing in a season full of them.
Alcántara's miserable season does not occur in a vacuum. An entire franchise is staking its trade season on the pitcher's return to form. The Marlins are in the midst of an aggressive rebuild, and a healthy and effective Alcántara — who will remain under affordable club control through 2027 — could net a massive, franchise-altering haul.
But the 29-year-old has 29 walks and 40 strikeouts over 51 innings. Left-handed hitters have reached base against him at a prodigious clip. And his altered pitch mix hasn't shown positive results.
The ace who authored six complete games amid a dominant season in 2022 hasn't thrown a pitch in the seventh inning all year.
Potential trade partners are forced to wonder if he is not the same pitcher as before the surgery. Until he performs, those questions will linger. And so both the Marlins and Alcántara are both dealing with a problem they're extremely motivated to fix.
'There are brighter days ahead for Sandy,' said Marlins pitching coach Daniel Moskos. 'That I wholeheartedly believe.'
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'The last thing to come back from Tommy John surgery is the execution side of things. You have a brand new arm while it's healthy, and can perform. It's strong and it can do all the things that you need it to do. The proprioception of where it's at in time and space can be kind of that last thing to come back.'
Alcántara was a unanimous Cy Young winner in 2022. He threw 228 2/3 innings, posted a 2.28 ERA and was worth 8.0 WAR. He had a 4.14 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Pick a stat from that season, and it showed a different element of his dominance over the sport.
The Marlins are frustrated because, well, they don't think he's fundamentally changed.
His velocity and pitch shapes are essentially what they have been. In their mind, this is a matter of that last five percent coming back – a small shift that will manifest itself in significant results.
In their mind, it's a mixture of bad luck and less-than-ideal execution. His expected ERA is 5.03, well below his actual numbers. But still way worse than what he's proven he can do.
'I think there's frustration, for sure,' said Marlins manager Clayton McCullough. '…You can certainly bet on the human and the person, that he's going to get out of this. You know, continue to try to reinforce that with him.
'We'd all love for it to happen sooner than later, but it's going to happen when it happens.'
Alcántara is generating chase — a swing on a pitch outside the strike zone — just 24 percent of the time, way down from his career average of 32.4 percent. His pitches on the edge of the zone are at 41.1 percent, down from 46.3 in his Cy Young season.
He's getting barreled up 10.1 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for his career. The average exit velocity against his pitches is 91.2 mph, up from 88.1 for his career.
Batters are pulling the ball against him 48.6 percent this season, compared with 38.1 percent over his time in the big leagues — which may cause him greater problems now than when he last pitched a full season, before the elimination of the shift.
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Against left-handed hitters, Alcántara has walked 22, compared with just 17 strikeouts. It's a major regression for a pitcher who once pitched to both sides of the plate with similar effectiveness.
All these numbers say a different version of the same thing: Alcántara is not anywhere close to what he's been his whole career. He's missing more middle-middle, and throwing more non-competitive pitches than ever. He's not efficient or effective.
If he wasn't Sandy Alcántara, he'd probably be in the minor leagues.
'I feel like I've just been stuck in the same inning,' Alcántara said, noting that he feels his stuff is all there. 'Trying to get past the sixth, and I can't. This is the game, and I've just got to keep battling. Keep trying to get through this.'
'I think I'm just trying to be too perfect. Pitching in the middle. When you leave it in the middle, you pay for it.'
At the start of spring training, the Marlins talked with Alcantara about altering his pitch mix. McCullough said it's important for veteran pitchers to expand their repertoires to remain unpredictable.
Alcántara's changes have resulted in more four-seam fastballs and far more curveballs. That's balanced by a little less of his two-seamer, changeup and slider.
That four-seamer is now utilized 26.2 percent of the time, up from 21.6 percent in 2023. His curveball, which he threw only 11 times total in his Cy Young season, is now being used 13.7 percent of the time.
The Marlins hope that the curveball can become a weapon against left-handers, which is why he's throwing it more. But it hasn't generated positive results. Nor has his fastball, which has a .315 batting average against, and is resulting in whiffs on just 14.9 percent of swings, compared with 26.8 percent in 2023.
'Maybe I'm throwing too many fastballs,' Alcántara said. 'In the past two or three, I've been more aggressive in throwing my two-seamer and changeup. This year, I'm using my four-seamer a lot.'
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When Peter Bendix took over as the Marlins' president of baseball operations before last season, he basically tore it all down. The team was coming off a playoff berth in 2023. But as has often been the case throughout Marlins history, success has been followed by a rebuild.
Bendix cleaned house in the front office. The coaching staff is now comprised of almost entirely new faces. He made eight deals at the trade deadline last season, including a breathtaking six deals on deadline day alone. He's reshaping the organization to his liking.
Trading Alcantara is the logical next step. Despite his struggles, each of the other 29 other teams would take him in a heartbeat — a consensus among league sources. But it's all about value, and selling high.
The Marlins don't have to trade Alcántara at the deadline. But it stands to reason that doing so would be their strong preference. They're not competing for the postseason this year. His value to their organization is rooted in the prospect haul he could net.
That's what makes the next two months so critical for Alcántara and his current employers. A couple of good starts will change that narrative. But then again, only one of his 11 starts thus far has been a quality outing.
He believes, and the Marlins believe, that this is all a post-surgery mirage that will all be fixed. But just how quickly that happens could make all the difference.
'I'm here to play baseball. I don't have to pay attention to what they say,' Alcántara said. 'I play for the Marlins. If they want to trade me, they'll trade me. I'm just going to keep competing, day by day. And we'll see what happens.'