Poll: Is Sandy Alcantara Back?

2025 was a season to forget for Marlins righty Sandy Alcantara. The 2022 NL Cy Young award winner looked to be establishing himself as one of the top pitchers in the entire sport just a few years ago, but that reputation has slipped the past few years due to injuries and ineffectiveness. Tommy John surgery Alcantara underwent in late 2023 wiped out his 2024 season. While he returned in time for the start of 2025, he wasn’t an effective starter for most of the year. Overall, he entered 2026 with a 4.73 ERA (95 ERA+) and 4.15 FIP in 59 starts since receiving his aforementioned Cy Young. Those numbers are closer to a fifth starter than an ace and questions over what the righty could really offer a team at this point helped keep him in Miami through last year’s trade deadline and this past winter.

Three starts into his 2026 campaign, Alcantara already seems to be changing the narrative. The righty has posted a sterling 0.74 ERA in 24 1/3 innings of work across his trio of outings this season. Those results are obviously excellent, but Alcantara’s trademark ability to pitch deep into games has been on full display as well; he’s averaged more than eight innings per start so far this year. Neither the sub-1.00 ERA nor his 240-inning pace will continue all year, of course, but what can fans expect from the righty this year?

There are some signals that Alcantara’s hot start to the year might be a mirage. The right-hander has limited his opponents to a .159 BABIP that will be impossible to maintain and sits more than a hundred points below his career norm. He’s also enjoyed a very easy schedule for the start of the season, facing off against bottom-feeders like the Rockies and White Sox while catching the Reds at a time where most of their lineup is scuffling badly. Given that level of competition, it would be understandable to exercise caution regarding the righty until he proves effective against some more challenging offenses.

That’s not to say there isn’t reason for optimism, however. The most obvious one is that Alcantara is now a full year removed from his Tommy John rehab, and his last season where he didn’t deal with elbow troubles or the aftermath of that surgery was his Cy Young 2022 campaign. That’s further supported by the fact that Alcantara improved drastically over the course of the 2025 season. After carrying a ghastly 7.22 ERA into last year’s All-Star break, he posted a 3.33 ERA with a 3.89 FIP the rest of the way, including a 2.62 ERA and 24.9% strikeout rate in the final six weeks of the regular season. When looking at the second half of 2025 in conjunction with the start of the 2026 season, Alcantara looks a whole lot like the ace he once was with a 2.75 ERA, 3.53 FIP, 48.6% ground ball rate, and a 15.5 K-BB% in 108 innings of work across 16 starts.

Zooming back in on his performance so far in 2026, Alcantara’s strikeout and walk rates are better than they’ve been since his Cy Young season and his ground ball rate is trending back up after dropping to just 46.5% last year. The most encouraging sign so far is the complete lack of hard contact Alcantara has allowed. That was the righty’s biggest issue in 2023 and ’25, and while those numbers will take some time to stabilize, things look very encouraging so far in 2026. He’s allowed just one barrel so far this year and his 28.6% hard-hit rate is exceptional thus far. It would be a shock to see those rates stay that low all year, but if he can post a barrel rate in the five to six percent range and a hard-hit rate under 40%, that would leave his profile looking a lot more like it did at his peak than in the years surrounding his surgery, when he combined for a 7.8% barrel rate and a 42.6% hard-hit rate.

How do MLBTR readers think Alcantara’s 2026 season will shake out this year? Will he re-establish himself as one of the league’s top pitchers? If not, will he at least return to being a clearly above-average starter in terms of run prevention for the first time since 2022, or is this hot start merely a flash in the pan? Have your say in the poll below: