4:59pm: The Marlins also don’t plan to trade Edward Cabrera today, per Alden Gonzalez of ESPN.
4:49pm: The Marlins aren’t trading right-hander Sandy Alcantara today, reports Craig Mish of SportsGrid and the Miami Herald. He’ll stay put in Miami’s rotation down the stretch. An offseason trade or a deal next summer remains a possibility, of course. Alcantara is being paid $17MM this year and next, and he has a $21MM club option for the 2027 season.
Alcantara and Cabrera were two of the more notable arms on the market this summer. Alcantara, in his first season back from Tommy John surgery, hasn’t posted anywhere close to his typically excellent results. He was sharp in each of his two outings prior to the deadline, but the right-hander’s 6.36 ERA in 109 frames and struggles throughout most of the season prevented the Fish from receiving what they deem commensurate value for a former Cy Young winner who has two years of control left on what would be well below-market rates if he were back to form. They’ll hope to get him right down the stretch.
Cabrera, 27, is a former top prospect in the midst of a breakout season. He’s tossed 94 innings of 3.35 ERA ball, fanning 24.3% of opponents against an 8.4% walk rate while sitting close to 97 mph with his heater. He dealt with a minor elbow scare earlier this month but avoided a trip to the injured list. Whether that gave interested teams any trepidation remains unclear.
Miami understandably had a high asking price on both pitchers. Cabrera is making just $1.95MM this year and is controllable via arbitration for another three years. The Marlins will head into the offseason with both righties penciled into their 2026 rotation, though their future with the organization hinges on when president of baseball operations Peter Bendix and owner Bruce Sherman feel a return to contention in the NL East is viable. If next year is going to be a transition year or a continuation of the franchise’s rebuilding efforts, they could end up on the block again in the offseason. At the very least, other clubs figure to try to pry both pitchers away.
What fun is that?
No Jones for you! Besides look how high Sandy’s era is. Yankees probably dodged a bullet here.
They’ll get a haul for him in the off season if he finishes strong.
I feel this guy is over hyped!
Lot of miles leading up to surgery. You just don’t know if he will regain form.
Yeah, Cy Young Award winners are always overhyped…especially when they play in a market that the national media refuses to cover.
Yeah Alacantra again has a really era. The Fish still could of gotten a haul for him.
But not what the Marlins wanted. It takes two teams to agree to a trade. The national media can squawk and spin the false narrative bashing of the Marlins all they want because their pop culture ratings teams didn’t get what they want from the Marlins for the return that the pop culture team wanted to give, not what the Marlins demanded. At the end of the day, the media darling teams will have to give what the Marlins want to get the trade done.
Cortes trades, May traded, this is mlbtr’s Super Bowl why is X so much faster to get info
Now – if you thought about that for a moment, you might arrive at your answer without further ado.
Then why all of the fuss?
With the Marlins very much improving on the position player side, it makes sense that they hold Sandy A. until they’re sure he won’t return to ace status.
Being 22-10 over the last 32 games also makes it the smart moves.
Teams were probably trying to buy low and Marlins were trying to sell high. Worth it to keep him until he figures it out again and his value goes up.
Why?
Cy Young winner who just recovered from Tommy John surgery. No reason to trade him when he is not even 100% yet. Just noise from teams trying to lowball. We have 3 more years to gain form and get what he is truly worth.
Smart move by Bendix. Better to allow Sandy to continue to smooth out his control after TJ, and see bette offers come through during the offseason. allow Eddy to continue to thrive under Sandy and with Eury.
Sandy is our Ace and clubhouse leader. Marlins finally realize you dont give up on those players.
Smart move.
Yep. And it makes for an interesting rest of hte season with them only trading away Sanchez (which was obvious), and adding another pitcher. Let’s see how they look the rest of the way.
Seller asking too much …
Buyer not getting there …
Add in the price of public ridicule …
And nothing gets done!
Or a GM just making the smart move?
They should have moved Cabrera. Never topped 99.2 innings until this season.
I like this. They likely aren’t making the playoffs (the NL field already seemed set even before today and the Pads just sealed the deal), but they are playing well, and could potentially play meaningful games in August & September which will only help them. Have them both finish strong, and Bendix can shop both in the off season when more teams will be in the mix too.
Headline should be “Marlins FAILED to trade Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera.”
“Other teams FAILED to acquire Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera”
Fixed.
You broke what was already perfect.
Alcantara is really bad since the surgery, so its not a failure to not trade for him. It is a failure for the low budget Marlins not to get rid of his salary.
Cabrera on the other hand could have filled several holes in that lineup in a single trade. Another failure on the Marlins part.
Their only consolation is that the Nationals are so bad that they won’t be in last place in the East next season.
But if the offers didn’t meet what Bendix wanted why trade them?
Bc clearly money is not the issue. If it were the fish would’ve traded both for the crap the Pads and other teams were offering.
I think this is a Pads fan who’s upset about three things.
1 – his team didn’t get either pitcher for free.
2 – his team emptied the farm without getting a centerpiece starting pitcher.
3 – Probably looked in the rearview mirror in the Wild Card standings for his team and noticed that the team his trying to bash hear has been quietly winning.
Hmmmm…wait, I’m wondering if not trading two controllable pitchers for lowball offers should be called a failure from a fan of a team that traded a Top 5 prospect in all of MLB for a relief pitcher.
It makes sense to not sell low. However, the risk is that he gets hurt again, or he gets worse and not better. Time will tell if the gamble pays off.
There’s always risk but he’s numbers since the start of June have been much closer to who he really is than the numbers he put up in April & May.
Not to mention he’s still building up strength along with improving his command. He’s only pumping on avg 97.5 mph on his FB. He’s was pushing closer to 99mph pre TJ
This was the right move, but I dont get why after trading Fortes and Jesus Sanchez, certain people, like Otto Lopez, Cal Quantrill, Janson Junk, Valente Bellozo, Calvin Faucher, Lake Bachar, Tyler Phillips, and Anthony Bender are all still here, especially the bullpen arms; it just doesnt make sense to me, beyond classic Marlins and lack of asset management
I’m thinking that Bendix wants to see the rest of the season for evaluation reasons of where the team is at. Not trading Bender kind of points to that because he’s the type of guy competing teams go after or hold onto.
With Quantril, I think it’s a case that Bendix didn’t get any offers. And in all honesty, I wouldn’t trade anything for him. Maybe it just came to that, so Bendix figured to just keep him for the rest of the season.
As for the rest, it’s hard to trade them when the team has improved vastly and have snuck into partial striking distance of the Wild Card. You may not want to trade those guys because you may want to go for it next season. After the issues we’ve had at SS ever since we traded Miggy Rojas, I am not in a rush to move Otto Lopez, who is one of Bendix’s waiver wire discoveries.
Thanks Banned, you have saved me the need to post 3 paragraphs.
I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Marsee and Johnston trying to stake a claim on a career in the Big Leagues. Sadly I don’t think Wagaman will make it stick.
@UKPhil
Marsee looks good – and not just the hits. I’m mostly impressed with the plate discipline. That will help him a lot within this lineup.
With Wagaman, I absolutely agree. I think he’s just a placeholder for when they feel that De Los Santos is ready as a RH compliment to Johnston. Maybe De Los Santos as a September call-up?
They have so much depth up the middle though, and also, look at Quantrill’s numbers his last 7-15 starts…he is at least more than comparable to others who were moved.
I agree that they decided to keep this going, lean on depth/potential callups, and see where they end up, but I still think I would have looked to trade those guys b/c i dont think it would have impacted that too much. Hopefully they hold up the rest of the way and they can get something for most of them in the offseason
@formerlyz
Yeah, I think some of these pieces will still be moved in the offseason, but I think what will change if we contend, would be the type of targets as far as arrival times. If they hold up the rest of the season, if they still move Alcantara, I think it’s for more of the MLB-ready and/or young MLB player type that fills an immediate need. Whereas before, or if we fall completely down to where this current run was just a flukish hot streak and competing next year is undoubtedly not a reality, then the trade returns would be focused toward best packages available, regardless of ETA to MLB.
I’m hoping we continue, which looks very possible, and we are thinking about trades for immediate pieces for competing next year.
I think if they hadn’t lost those 4 games recently for various reasons, they’d have a strong shot to keep winning and make it, but I dont know if 87-even89 wins gets in, and thats if they play like 12-14 games over the rest of the way as they have been
If Sandy holds up the rest of the way this year, and you dont get a good enough offer, you might even consider an extension at the right price (we have literally zero committed lol), then you can revisit moving him later for more value, or you just have him there for innings attempting to win. If they’re trading him, I’m hoping for full value as much as I can as any deal, not eta. Try to maximize the asset as much as possible
That will have to play out though. Chances are he gets moved by next trade deadline or not at all, b/c I think if the Marlins arms can be healthy next year, 5hey have a chance theoretically
I just think they could have traded those arms, and Otto Lopez, and still competed. I really like this team, but we traded the pieces we did for the same reasons we should have traded the rest of the guys i was talking about. I hope they have enough time to catch someone. It is legit possible, in which case, way to not flinch
@formerlyz
Trading Sanchez and Fortes to make room for Johnston and Marsee made sense.
If Mazur was ready then trading Quantril for a box of balls would have made sense.
If Cabrera finishes this season healthy and playing at this level his value goes up substantially this winter.. Sandy did not give sufficient proof of recovery to be traded this deadline.
Phase 1 of the rebuild has already been completed. This is a team that can win ballgames. Now we need to make the team better so we can compete in the postseason.
So no, we didn’t trade Bender, Faucher, Lopez because we did not have upgrades immediately available.
It looks like how a rebuild should be done. This is a new experience for a Marlins fan.
I disagree that there arent ready replacements, but I’m cool with not having moved Lopez for now, but strongly question the rest, but again, this is arguably the best position they’ve been in like 22 years, so I’m glad they’re going for it, but especially not having moved on Sandy or Cavrera too soon
Between you and me, I would be delighted if this year’s Marlins could finish around 2004 or 2005 level. That was 83 – 79