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Braxton Garrett Scratched From Sunday Start Due To Elbow Discomfort

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Marlins left-hander Braxton Garrett has been scratched from his scheduled start against the Mariners tomorrow due to discomfort in his left elbow, as noted by MLB.com’s Christina DeNicola earlier today. DeNicola adds that Garrett is set to undergo further evaluation on his elbow.

It’s not currently clear how severe Garret’s ailment, which he reportedly felt following his bullpen session on Friday, will wind up being. That being said, elbow issues are always anxiety-inducing for fans and players alike given the fact that serious elbow injuries often require season-ending surgery, as has been the case for a number of star pitchers of late, ranging from Spencer Strider of the Braves to Kyle Bradish of the Orioles to Garrett’s teammates Eury Perez and Sandy Alcantara. Of course, it’s important to remember that elbow issues can also be relatively minor, as was the case for Astros lefty Framber Valdez when he was placed on the IL with elbow soreness back in April and ended up requiring only a minimum stay.

Regardless of if Garrett misses an extended period or is down for just one start, it’s the latest difficult injury news for a Miami franchise wracked with pitching injuries. The club already has six starting pitchers on the injured list after placing left-hander (and potential top trade candidate) Jesus Luzardo on the injured list due to a lumbar stress reaction earlier today. Luzardo joined right-handers Perez, Alcantara Edward Cabrera, and Sixto Sanchez as well as fellow southpaw Ryan Weathers on the IL. That massive group of injured starters has left the Marlins scrambling to fill out a rotation that on paper should have been the deepest part of the club’s roster entering the season.

Trevor Rogers, Roddery Munoz, Yonny Chirinos, and Shaun Anderson currently occupy rotation spots alongside Garrett, and it’s possible that top prospect Max Meyer could replace Garrett in the rotation in the long-term if needed. DeNicola notes that Meyer last started in Triple-A on Thursday, however, meaning he would not be lined up to pitch  tomorrow even if the club did want to call him up for a spot start in Garrett’s stead. DeNicola floats the possibility that the club could turn to multi-inning reliever George Soriano, who pitched three innings at the Triple-A level on Tuesday, to open a bullpen game tomorrow. Soriano is already on the 40-man roster, and an alternative spot starting option such as Kent Emanuel or Devin Smeltzer would require the Marlins to make space on the 40-man.

While the Marlins are widely acknowledged to be one of the game’s few clear sellers this summer after already shipping Luis Arraez to the Padres earlier this year, an injury of significance for Garrett would surely all but guarantee that he remains with the Marlins for the remainder of the 2024 season. After all, the July 30 trade deadline is just over a month away at this point, and even a minimum stint on the IL for Garrett would sideline him for long enough to allow him just three more starts prior to the trade deadline.

For a pitcher who was already shelved with a shoulder impingement earlier this year and has struggled to a 5.35 ERA in the seven starts he’s been healthy enough to make this year, that timeline makes it difficult to imagine Garrett convincing an interested club of his health and effectiveness enough for them to be comfortable dealing for the lefty prior to the deadline. Fortunately for the Marlins, there’s no real urgency to move Garrett given that the southpaw is under team control through the end of the 2028 season. That gives the lefty plenty of time to return to the form he flashed over 48 appearances between 2022 and 2023, when he pitched to a 3.63 ERA with a 3.64 FIP with a 23.8% strikeout rate.

Marlins Outright Kent Emanuel

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TODAY: The Marlins have outrighted Emanuel to Triple-A after he cleared waivers, as per Emanuel’s MLB.com profile page.  There isn’t yet any word as to whether or not Emanuel has accepted the assignment.

JUNE 19: The Marlins announced Wednesday morning that left-hander Kent Emanuel has been designated for assignment. His spot on the roster will go to right-hander Yonny Chirinos, whose previously announced promotion to the big league roster is now official. Chirinos will start today’s game for the Fish.

Emanuel, 32, was selected to the Marlins’ big league roster for a second time this season over the weekend. He tossed 2 1/3 shutout innings across two appearances during this most recent stint. The former Astros, Phillies and Pirates farmhand made two more appearances with Miami back in April and was hit hard. Overall, he’s surrendered seven earned runs in 8 1/3 major league innings this season. That’s a far cry from the 2.55 ERA he notched in a 17 2/3-inning big league debut with the 2021 Astros (the team that originally selected him in the third round of the 2013 draft).

Things haven’t gone much better for Emanuel in Triple-A Jacksonville. He’s made nine appearances, four of them starts, and totaled 30 innings of 6.60 ERA ball. The 6’4″ UNC product has fanned 19% of his opponents against a tidy 5.8% walk rate in that time. It’s the sixth season in which Emanuel has logged time at the Triple-A level. Overall, he owns a 5.18 ERA, a 20% strikeout rate and a 6.1% walk rate in 391 frames there.

Within the next week, Emanuel will either be traded, placed on outright waivers or released. He’s been outrighted in the past, so if he goes unclaimed on waivers he’d have the right to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency.

Marlins Place Jesus Luzardo On 15-Day Injured List

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12:59PM: The move has been officially announced, with Luzardo’s placement retroactive to June 19.  The left-hander’s injury has been termed as a lumbar stress reaction, and Schumaker floated a recovery timeline of 4-6 weeks to De Nicola and other reporters.  Though Schumaker was speaking in more general terms about recoveries from similar injuries rather than what can be expected for Luzardo himself, it nevertheless remains unclear if Luzardo will be able to pitch again before the trade deadline.

10:42AM: The Marlins have placed left-hander Jesus Luzardo on the 15-day injured list due to a back injury.  The team already announced yesterday that Luzardo was being scratched from his planned start today, and Shaun Anderson is being recalled from Triple-A to take the hill against the Mariners.

Luzardo has been trying to pitch through his back problem “for a couple of weeks,” manager Skip Schumaker told MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola and other reporters, and the team even considered scratching him from his previous start against the Nationals last Sunday.  As De Nicola notes, Luzardo’s velocity was down during that outing, though Luzardo still managed five innings of two-run ball against Washington.

“You don’t want to overdo another side of the body or another part of the body because you’re trying not to hurt whatever is being hurt or is hurting,” Schumaker said.  “You definitely don’t want to push through something, especially the back, because it could lead to other things.  So we’ll see what the results say and what the doctors say, but it’s definitely not something that you push through.”

This is Luzardo’s second IL trip this season, as he also missed just under three weeks dealing with tightness in his throwing elbow.  Luzardo has a lengthy and well-documented injury history that also includes a Tommy John surgery, but the 2023 season showed a glimpse of what the southpaw could do when he was finally healthy.  Over 32 starts and 178 2/3 innings for Miami last year, Luzardo posted a 3.58 ERA, 28.1% strikeout rate, and 7.4% walk rate to help lead the Marlins to a wild card berth.

The numbers have fallen off in 2024, with health undoubtedly some sort of factor in Luzardo’s 5.00 ERA over 66 2/3 frames.  While his 4.20 SIERA is a little more respectable, Luzardo’s strikeout rate has sharply dropped to 21.2%, and his fastball velocity has gone from 96.7mph in 2023 to 95.1mph this year.  As per Statcast, Luzardo’s four-seamer was one of the more effective pitches in baseball last season, but is now a below-average offering.

Anderson has already made one spot start for the Marlins since he was acquired in a trade with the Rangers last month, and now might get more opportunities as Miami continues to deal with an injury-plagued rotation.  Since the last-place Marlins have long since thrown in the towel on contending this season, much of the focus on Miami has been around on what the team might do at the trade deadline, with Luzardo’s name often mentioned a prime candidate to be moved.

Even considering his shaky 2024 production, Luzardo has been viewed as possibly the Marlins’ best trade chip due to his age (26) and the two-plus years of arbitration control that runs through the 2026 campaign.  However, this latest injury creates new doubt that Luzardo will even be back on the mound by the July 30 deadline, given how back problems can tend to linger.  There’s no urgency for the Marlins to move Luzardo this summer when other trades could be explored this winter or really at any time during Luzardo’s remaining tenure with the organization, but naturally another injury-marred season will lower his trade value.

Marlins Designate Christian Bethancourt For Assignment

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June 21: The Marlins have now made it official, announcing they have selected Sánchez and designated Bethancourt for assignment.

June 20: The Marlins are designating catcher Christian Bethancourt for assignment, reports Christina De Nicola of MLB.com (X link). De Nicola adds that the recently-acquired Ali Sánchez is likely to be selected onto the MLB roster in his place.

Miami acquired Bethancourt from the Guardians in a cash transaction over the offseason. It was one of the first moves of note for new president of baseball operations Peter Bendix, who had been the general manager in Tampa Bay during Bethancourt’s two-year run with the Rays. The move didn’t go as the front office hoped.

Bethancourt appeared in 38 games for the Fish and hit .159/.198/.268 over 88 plate appearances. He struck out 22 times while drawing three walks and collecting 13 hits. Miami has gotten even less offense out of starting catcher Nick Fortes, who owns a .159/.194/.225 line over 145 trips. Between that duo and a handful of reps from Jhonny Pereda, Miami has gotten an MLB-worst .155/.192/.237 slash out of its catchers.

That’s not tenable production even for a noncompetitive team. Fortes is younger than Bethancourt and still has minor league options remaining, so the Marlins will move on from the more experienced backstop as their first change behind the plate.

There’s a decent chance Miami will end up keeping Bethancourt in the organization at Triple-A Jacksonville. The Panamanian catcher is playing on a $2.05MM arbitration salary, a little over half of which remains to be paid. That’ll diminish any trade interest and could get Bethancourt through waivers unclaimed. As a player with between three and five years of major league service, he would need to forfeit what remains of that salary to elect free agency. If he clears waivers, he’d likely accept an outright assignment to Jacksonville. Even if he sticks in the organization for the time being, he’d be a straightforward non-tender candidate at the end of the season.

Sánchez, assuming he’s indeed the corresponding call-up, will get to the big leagues for the first time since 2021. The 27-year-old only has seven games of MLB experience. He has played parts of five seasons in Triple-A, where he’s a .270/.344/.400 hitter in more than 1000 plate appearances. Sánchez was hitting .240/.338/.388 for the Cubs’ top affiliate when Miami acquired him for cash considerations last night.

A Venezuela native, Sánchez is a contact-oriented offensive player who has gotten decent reviews from scouts for his receiving skills. He cut down 34.3% of attempted basestealers in Triple-A last season. That dropped sharply to a 13% rate over 268 1/3 innings there this year. Sánchez is out of options, so the Marlins would need to put him on waivers to take him off the MLB roster once they select his contract.

Marlins Release Burch Smith

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The Marlins have released right-hander Burch Smith, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That was the expected outcome after he was designated for assignment a week ago. He’s now a free agent and can sign with any club.

Smith, 34, signed a minor league deal with the Rays in the offseason. He didn’t crack that club’s Opening Day roster but had an upward mobility clause in his contract. Such a clause meant that the Rays had to send him to another team if any of them wanted to give Smith a roster spot. The Marlins wanted him and so the Rays traded him for cash considerations.

The righty went to make 25 appearances with the Fish with a 4.25 earned run average and subpar strikeout rate of 17%. However, his 6.7% walk rate and 47% ground ball rate were both a few ticks better than average. A .376 batting average on balls in play may have pushed some extra runs across the plate, which is why his 3.04 FIP and 4.00 SIERA were both more pleasant than his ERA. The Marlins are one of the worst defensive clubs this year, as their -24 Outs Above Average is dead last and their -19 Defensive Runs Saved is better than just three clubs.

Perhaps Smith would have fared better in different circumstances but he got nudged off the roster regardless, likely not helped by allowing five earned runs in his final three appearances before getting designated for assignment a week ago.

Smith came into this season with his service time count at four years and 92 days, putting him 80 shy of the five-year mark. He hit that line on June 15, the day after he was designated for assignment, as players still collect service time while in DFA limbo. By getting over that mark, he earned the right to reject an outright assignment while retaining all of his $1MM salary. Unless some club wanted to grab him off waivers, he was bound for the open market, which prompted the Marlins to release him.

Now that he’s freely available, he could attract interest from clubs looking to make a low-cost buy. The Marlins remain on the hook for what remains of that salary, while another club could sign him and only have to pay him the prorated version of the league minimum for any time spent on the roster. That amount would be subtracted from what the Fish pay.

Perhaps one of the other teams will feel Smith could find a bit more success with some better batted ball luck or by pitching in front of a better defense. If so, he could be grabbed for a minimal cost and no real commitment.

Marlins Acquire Ali Sanchez From Cubs

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The Cubs traded minor league catcher Ali Sánchez to the Marlins, tweets Tommy Birch of the Des Moines Register. According to the MLB.com transaction tracker, Miami sent cash in return.

Sánchez was not on Chicago’s 40-man roster. He won’t immediately take a spot on Miami’s. He’ll head to Triple-A Jacksonville for the time being, joining his third organization of the season in the process. The Venezuela native signed a somewhat surprising big league contract with the Pirates last offseason. Pittsburgh outrighted him off the 40-man roster at the end of Spring Training, sending him back to free agency. Sánchez inked a non-roster deal with the Cubs a week into the season and had been playing for Triple-A Iowa.

He appeared in 41 games, hitting .240/.338/.388 in 148 trips to the plate. That’s a step down from the .311/.375/.492 batting line he’d posted with Arizona’s Triple-A affiliate in 2023. Reno, where the D-Backs’ top farm team plays, is one of the sport’s most favorable hitting environments. Sánchez, a typically light hitter, connected on 11 homers in 67 games there. He hit three longballs with Iowa.

While he doesn’t bring much power to the table, Sánchez has decent contact skills. He has drawn walks in 12.2% of his plate appearances on the season against an 18.9% strikeout rate. He’s generally regarded as a capable defender, though he only cut down six of 46 attempted basestealers with Iowa.

The Cubs have gotten almost nothing out of their catching duo of Miguel Amaya and Yan Gomes. They nevertheless opted against bringing Sánchez up. Chicago signed Tomás Nido to a major league contract while designating Gomes for assignment this morning.

Miami is one of the only teams whose catchers have been less productive than the Amaya/Gomes pairing. Marlins catchers — almost exclusively Christian Bethancourt and Nick Fortes — have hit an MLB-worst .155/.192/.237 over 232 plate appearances. Miami isn’t going to expend much to upgrade the position in a lost season. Sánchez could play his way into an MLB look with a productive showing in Jacksonville. Bethancourt, Fortes and Jhonny Pereda are the catchers on the 40-man roster.

Marlins’ Dillon Head To Undergo Season-Ending Hip Surgery

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Marlins outfield prospect Dillon Head will undergo season-ending surgery hip surgery, Isaac Azout of Fish On First reports. More specifically, Christina De Nicola of MLB.com reports that Head will require a left femoral acetabular impingement procedure. He’s expected to resume baseball activities in roughly three months, per Azout, though that mid- or late-September return to baseball activity won’t give him sufficient time to ramp back up to game action before the regular season concludes.

Head, 19, was the centerpiece of the early-season trade that sent Luis Arraez from Miami to San Diego. He appeared in only five games in Miami’s system this year — three shortly after the trade and another two following a lengthy IL stint — and will now lose the remainder of the season rehabbing from this surgery.

In 104 plate appearances with the Padres’ Class-A club prior to the trade, Head slashed .237/.317/.366 with a homer and three steals (albeit in seven attempts). He was inactive for ten days following the trade, then appeared in just three Class-A games with the Fish before landing on the injured list. Head went 4-for-12 with a triple and two steals in that brief look.

A first-round pick (No. 25 overall) out of Illinois’ Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School just last summer, Head is viewed as a speed- and contact-oriented outfielder whose wheels could help him develop into a plus center field defender as he continues to hone his reads. MLB.com ranks him fifth among Miami farmhands and credits him with true 80-grade speed. FanGraphs lists him third in Miami’s system behind Max Meyer and 2023 first-rounder Noble Meyer (who was selected 15 picks prior to Head in that draft).

Head was already viewed as a long-term development play at the time of the trade given his youth, and the loss of virtually his entire age-19 season will only further that likelihood. He’ll turn 20 in October and will enter the 2024 season with just 37 career games and 177 plate appearances at the Class-A level. Presumably, he’ll head back to Class-A Jupiter to open the 2024 season (health permitting) and work his way up the minor league ladder. A big league debut in 2025 doesn’t feel realistic, but late in the 2026 season or some point in the 2027 season he could feasibly be ready for a look in the majors.

Marlins To Select Yonny Chirinos

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Yonny Chirinos will start for the Marlins on Wednesday against the Cardinals, the team announced (X link via Daniel Álvarez-Montes of El Extrabase). Isaac Azout of Fish on First noted (on X) this afternoon that Chirinos was in the clubhouse.

Miami will need to select Chirinos onto the 40-man roster tomorrow morning. Their roster is at capacity, so they’ll need to make a corresponding move. Miami will also need to option (or DFA) a pitcher to create a spot on the active roster.

Chirinos, 30, gets to the majors for a sixth season. He signed with the Fish on a minor league deal over the winter. Chirinos has taken the ball 12 times for Triple-A Jacksonville, allowing an even three earned runs per nine across 66 innings. The Venezuelan-born righty has a modest 17.2% strikeout rate against a decent 8.4% walk percentage.

Command has always been Chirinos’ biggest strong suit. He has a tidy 6.3% walk rate in 326 1/3 MLB frames between the Rays and Braves. He hasn’t missed many bats but managed a sub-4.00 ERA with Tampa Bay between 2018-20. Chirinos underwent Tommy John surgery late in the 2020 campaign and fractured his elbow while rehabbing from that procedure. He struggled in his return a year ago, allowing a 5.40 ERA over 85 frames.

Chirinos has more than five years of major league service. The Marlins won’t be able to send him back to Jacksonville without his agreement now that he’s back in the big leagues. He’d qualify for free agency at the end of the season if he pitches well enough to hold his MLB spot for the rest of the year.

The Jesus Luzardo Alternative Who *Should* Be Available Next Month

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Find virtually any primer for the 2024 trade deadline and you'll see Jesus Luzardo's name at or near the top of the discussion. He's probably even the feature image on many of those pieces. It's not hard to see why. A hard-throwing 26-year-old lefty with two seasons of club control beyond the current campaign and big strikeout abilities is always going to be in demand. And the Marlins, sitting at 23-48 on the season, have effectively been out of postseason contention since the second week of the season. A 1-12 start to the year will do that to you.

Luzardo might be the most talked-about name on the trade market this summer and has a far better chance to move than your standard prime-aged starting pitcher with two-plus seasons of club control. The Marlins already traded Luis Arraez in early May, after all. They're clearly open for business.

Nearly everything I just said about Luzardo applies to another lefty on the opposite coast. And yet for all the Luzardo chatter we've already heard and will continue to hear, the trade buzz between the two southpaws doesn't align.

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Marlins Select Kent Emanuel

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The Marlins announced earlier this afternoon that they’ve selected the contract of left-hander Kent Emanuel. Right-hander Shaun Anderson was optioned in a corresponding move. Emmanuel will take the 40-man roster spot of right-hander Burch Smith, who was designated for assignment yesterday.

The 32-year-old Emanuel was a third-round pick by the Astros back in 2013 and eventually worked his way up to the big leagues with the club in 2021, when he posted a strong 2.55 ERA across ten multi-inning relief appearances. Despite those solid top-level numbers, Emanuel struck out just 19.1% of batters faced and allowed four home runs in 17 2/3 innings of work. Those lackluster peripherals led the Astros to place Emanuel on waivers that November, where he was eventually claimed by the Phillies. Emanuel spent the 2022 season in the Phillies’s minor league system but was limited to just 13 starts by injury. After being outrighted off the roster in Philadelphia that offseason, Emanuel signed with Pittsburgh on a minor league deal and struggled in a swing role. He pitched to a 6.19 ERA in 20 appearances (13 starts) at the Triple-A level before returning to free agency, where he eventually found a minor league deal with the Marlins ahead of the 2024 campaign.

Since then, he’s been selected to the roster in Miami multiple times; today’s selection is actually his third of the season. In both of his previous stints with the big league club, the Marlins have turned to Emanuel as a multi-inning relief option for a single appearance before removing him from the roster. He’s struggled in both of his appearances this year, allowing eight runs (seven earned) in six innings of work while striking out four and walking three. Emanuel has struggled similarly at the Triple-A level this year as well, with a 6.60 ERA in nine appearances split between the rotation and bullpen. It seems likely Emanuel is once again ticketed for multi-inning relief with the Marlins, though it remains to be seen if his third stay in the big leagues with Miami will last longer than the last two.

Making room for Emanuel on the active roster is Anderson. The 29-year-old was only up with the big league Marlins for one day, as he allowed seven runs on ten hits in two innings of work in a start against the Nationals yesterday. Anderson, who was acquired from the Rangers in a cash deal at the end of May, is making his return to the big leagues this season after making 14 starts for the KIA Tigers of the Korea Baseball Organization last year. Prior to last night’s blow up start in Washington, Anderson had made two appearances for the Rangers. He allowed two runs on six hits and a walk while striking out three over 3 1/3 innings of work during his time with Texas, and figures to head back to the minors to act as optionable depth for the Marlins going forward.

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