Amid the flurry of trades prior to this evening’s deadline, the Marlins claimed right-hander Jesus Tinoco off waivers from the Cubs. Tinoco was recently designated for assignment by Chicago following their acquisition of right-hander Nate Pearson from the Blue Jays. A corresponding move was not necessary as Miami’s numerous trades today left several spots available on the club’s 40-man and active rosters.
Tinoco, 29, made his big league debut with the Rockies back in 2019. This is actually the righty’s second stint in a Marlins uniform as he pitched five scoreless innings for the club during the shortened 2020 season when they shocked the baseball world by sneaking into the expanded playoffs despite a -41 run differential. Overall, the right-hander has posted a decent 4.35 ERA ERA in 80 2/3 innings of work in parts of five seasons in the big leagues, though his solid 109 ERA+ for his career is belied by a bloated 6.58 FIP caused by rough peripheral numbers. During his time in the majors, the righty has struck out just 18.2% of batters faced while walking 13.4%. That 4.8 K-BB% is the 12th-worst figure among all MLB pitchers with at least 80 innings of work since the start of the 2019 campaign.
Brutal as those results have been, there was at least some reason for optimism about Tinoco’s future entering the year. The right-hander departed affiliated ball last year for a one-year sojourn in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, and he posted an impressive 3.08 ERA in 64 1/3 innings of work overseas. While his strikeout rate remained below 20%, he cut his walk rate to a more palatable 9.2% that earned him another shot in affiliated ball. He signed with Texas on a minor league deal entering the year and has struggled in the majors but posted decent numbers in the minors across the Rangers, Royals, and Cubs organizations this year. His 5.79 ERA in 14 innings of work in the majors is well below par, but his 3.86 ERA in 28 Triple-A innings, most of which were pitched in the offense-inflated environment of the Pacific Coast League, offer some reason for optimism.
For the Marlins, Tinoco provides the club an arm who is immediately available to fill out a pitching staff that lost Trevor Rogers, Tanner Scott, Bryan Hoeing, and Huascar Brazoban in trades today. It’s difficult to project just how the club’s bullpen mix figures to shake out after such a major shakeup, although it seems safe to expect Tinoco to be used primarily in the middle innings given his lackluster track record at the big league level so far. As for the Cubs, the club appears to be fairly deep in bullpen options even after parting ways with Tinoco and shipping out both Mark Leiter Jr. and Hunter Bigge in deals this week. Julian Merryweather, Hector Neris, and Tyson Miller figure to get the bulk of high leverage opportunities, while Pearson figures to join youngsters like Porter Hodge and Ethan Roberts in handling the middle innings.
The Marlins are turning to Jesus to save their pitching staff.
Erm, it’s pronounced hey-zeus. Not jee-zus… hope that clears it up for you!
No it’s Jesus is heading for the Beach. News at 11.
Um, @The Melon Man…You don’t realize that hey-zeus in Spanish is the same as jee-zus in English?
Too bad the Baby Cakes aren’t in business.
If I remember “Jesus Just Left Chicago” correctly, he was bound for New Orleans, not Miami.
Fish will win a win another world series before the biggest joke in sports does. One win in a 115 years and the delusional fans/sheep lap it up. A good organization should build a Wrigley replica.
JESUS will soon appear in Miami !!
So, since the trade deadline where we dumped off a lot of the bullpen, the Marlins have blown half of their games where the bullpen was handed a lead. People said we’d feel it bad once we traded all the bullpen pieces. But from what I’m seeing, blowing half of the games where leads were handed to the bullpen is still right on par with the bullpen before all the trades…whether it’s the warm bodies we have now or the BSV masters we had before.
And I’m still enjoying that teams actually gave us prospects for our implosive relievers. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
@BannedMarlinsFanBase
Bendix did a much better job bringing in young MLB-ready talent during the trade deadline than anyone in the previous front office could’ve possibly done. Now we have a lot of good young prospects. It may take some time, but I think we’re heading in the right direction.
Yep, I was actually surprised how many MLB-ready guys we brought back. And fate resulted in us keeping many key SPs due to their injuries, so they most likely don’t get traded until next year…assuming that they aren’t putting us around .500 if they pitch like they do.
Does anyone really think we’ll be a horrible team with a healthy Sandy, Eury, Max, Luzardo, Garrett, Weathers, Cabrera (somewhere), etc. next year?
@BannedMarlinsFanBase
I think we’ll be a very good team next year. Add to the guys you’ve mentioned above Adam Mazur and Robby Snelling (from the Padres) plus our own rising stars, Noble Meyer and Thomas White. Make no mistake, we’re still pitching-rich. Factor in a revamped lineup filled with young guns who can actually hit for power and average, and we profile as a team that can score a lot more runs to back that pitching. Just like the old days. If everything falls into place, it’s gonna be lovely!
It seems that Bendix isn’t entirely sold on next year being a wash either. He has the MLB-ready guys, and we see he’s holding auditions on MLB players that are 28 and younger, but other teams have given up on, to see if he finds something good.
And we have our next manager in place if Skip chooses to leave.
Come on, Deeds. “Brutal as those results have been” is not proper English. You can’t just leave “as” out to start the sentence. For example:
“As brutal as Nick Deeds’ writing is, MLBTR continues to employ him despite flauting or not knowing basic grammar and punctuation.”