In most ordinary cases, giving up prospects for a pitcher with an ERA over 7.00 at the Trade Deadline would be a laughable notion. Sandy Alcantara, however, is no ordinary starter. The Marlins’ right-hander is still only a few years removed from a Cy Young Award, but this year his stats have cratered in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. It’s easy to wonder whether the version of him we saw in 2022 is gone for good.
But what if a change of scenery did him some good? Would the Yankees, with a need to bolster their rotation and a reputation for helping talented pitchers get better, make sense as a destination for Alcantara this deadline?
On the surface, Alcantara appears to have all the same weapons he possessed in 2022. He has his high-90s two-seam and four-seam fastballs. He’s got his signature changeup which at its best served as his main strikeout option while also keeping hitters on the ground. Lastly the 29-year-old has a pair of breaking balls to round out the five-pitch mix: a slider and a curveball.
These pitches look mostly as they did back then, which makes Sandy’s awful performances tougher to metabolize. Through 18 starts, the former ace has just one scoreless outing—as opposed to eight starts with five or more runs allowed. His strikeout rate is low and his hard-hit rate is high. He reined in the walks from where they were at the start of the year, but overall they’re still not at a rate you’d like. Naturally his signature quality—pitching deep into games—has been greatly affected by these struggles. He has yet to pitch in the seventh this year and has is averaging a hair over five innings per start, down from over six and a half per start in 2023.
Precious little has worked for Sandy from a statistical standpoint—though it is worth noting that his 4.59 FIP and 4.99 xERA indicate that he at least shouldn’t be getting hit this hard.
The main reasons behind this malaise appear to be poor command and low confidence, but Alcantara appears to be improving in the former category, rocky start to July notwithstanding. Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs wrote about his modest turnaround in June and highlighted his improvements in commanding the zone—part of it pertains to the strides he’s taken in cutting his walk rate from an apocalyptic 14.2 percent at the end of April.
Next, the confidence issues, which have affected his sequencing. Alcantara has spoken about not quite trusting his stuff during the toughest parts of the season—in particular his secondaries. He’s leaned on his four-seam fastball in a pinch, and opponents have punished him for it. The four-seamer, never his best pitch, has been smashed to the tune of a .396 wOBA this year.
Ultimately these issues—command, confidence, sequencing—have no one-size-fits-all approach. Adjustments aren’t as simple as pointing to a pitch usage chart and saying “hey Sandy: less fastball, more changeup, please.” Your strategy should be statistically sound, but the pitcher has to buy in before you get anywhere. That’s where Matt Blake’s reputation could come into play.
It’s dangerous to refer to the Yankees’ pitching coach as a wizard capable of casting a spell and fixing any struggling pitcher, as he is often discussed within Yankee fan circles. But Alcantara’s profile feels like a repertoire Blake can have success with. We’ve seen how he and Carlos Rodón have worked to adjust Rodón’s pitch usages and add new wrinkles to make him a tougher pitcher to square up. No reinvention was necessary—Rodón is still primarily a fastball-slider pitcher, but both pitches have been more effective this year than last year thanks in large part to the changeup and new sinker which he has brought into the fold during an All-Star renaissance.
Alcantara’s repertoire is already developed. If Blake can work with him to build his confidence in his secondaries and improve upon those command and sequencing tweaks, it may not return Sandy to the peak of his powers, but one would imagine he wouldn’t be a 7.00+ ERA pitcher going forward either. Recall just how bad Alcantara’s four-seam fastball has been, and recall all the times the Yankees have brought in a new pitcher and chopped down their four-seam fastball rate. It’s primarily a secondaries-first staff, and Alcantara may stand to benefit from that approach, assuming he buys in. (To be clear though, that sinker shouldn’t be going anywhere.)
The Marlins are in an interesting spot. They have had a surprisingly good year in Clayton McCullough’s first season as manager, but still clearly figure to be sellers at the deadline. However, baseball operations head Peter Bendix doesn’t have many obvious candidates to trade, outside of Alcantara. And with that 7.22 ERA his trade value figures to be lower than ever.
The Marlins could easily decide to hold onto Alcantara, who has one more guaranteed year on his contract with a team option for 2027. This is the most likely scenario in my book, since a resurgent second half from him could bolster their return next offseason or even as a “rental” next Trade Deadline. That said, the starting pitching market is rather thin, so they may yet get some value for him if another team is willing to roll the dice on the right prospect package offer—the case of Zac Gallen, an impending free agent who appears likely to be dealt despite going through a down year himself, should be instructive for gauging Alcantara’s trade value.