What Will the Marlins Do With Sandy Alcantara?

The return of the Miami Marlins ace was highly anticipated. Not just by Marlins fans but by baseball fans across the country who remembered just how dominant the 2023 unanimous Cy Young Award winner was before he went down.

After missing all of the 2024 season, Sandy Alcantara made his return to the mound on Opening Day against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Between that start and all of the bullpen videos we were watching in the lead up to it, Sandy was flashing the same velocity and movement that we all remembered.

Unfortunately, it just hasn’t been the same as the season progresses.

Stats were taken prior to play on June 10.

What’s Wrong With Sandy Alcantara?

Before the season started, there were rumors that Sandy was on the trade block even before he threw another pitch for the Marlins. While Miami was quick to move on from Jesús Luzardo when his value was at its lowest, as proven by his start to the year, Peter Bendix decided that Sandy was going to be on the roster to begin the season.

Now, through the struggles, it is easy to say that he made the wrong choice in which pitcher to move on from.

Heading into his start on June 10, Sandy has an ERA of 7.89 across 57.0 innings pitched. Of starters with at least 50 innings on the year, that’s the highest mark in Major League Baseball.

His 4.74 BB/9 is also very worrisome, considering how easily he was able to execute each of his pitches prior to the injury. That mark is the fourth highest among starters with at least 50 innings.

It isn’t only the surface numbers that look bad for Sandy right now. His pitches are being barreled up at an alarming 8.7% to go along with a 44.0% hard-hit rate. Both are well above league average and noticeable increases from his marks in previous seasons.

As I previously mentioned, and as you can see by the heat maps above, Sandy is missing middle-middle with essentially every pitch.

While the velocity is still there, it does not do him any good if he is leaving every pitch down the middle of the plate. He just isn’t able to get his pitches in a spot where hitters are tempted to chase, greatly impacting his effectiveness on the bump.

One thing that may be causing this is the arm angle that he is currently throwing at. Sandy’s arm angle in 2020 and 2021 was 35 degrees, and in 2022 and 2023 it was 34 degrees. In 2025, however, it is down to 31 degrees. Even though it may not seem like much, that certainly impacts the way pitches move.

Now this begs the question: Is it still worth a team taking a chance on Alcantara now, given how he is struggling?

What Is the Best Path Forward?

For the Marlins, I am sure they would like to continue to move on from the big salaries that they have on their books. Sandy, even though the value of his deal is affordable, should he return to even half of what he was during his Cy Young season, the AAV at around $19 million across the next three years does provide value for a competing ball club. That also includes the $21 million player option for the 2027 season.

I do not think that this is going to be the version of Sandy we see moving forward. The initial return from Tommy John surgery is always bound to bring some struggles as a pitcher tries to learn to pitch again.

This start to the year may be worse than anyone could have anticipated, but we should give grace to the pitcher who has shown to be a workhorse for a ball club and pitch at a high level throughout his career with the Marlins.

What will the Marlins do? The eventual departure of Sandy is bound to happen. There will be a team willing to take the chance on him. At this point, it all depends on how much of a discount the Marlins are willing to take. For their sake, I hope it is a better return than what they got from the Phillies for Luzardo.