Return of the Max | FanGraphs Baseball

The Miami Marlins made a shocking run to the postseason in 2023, but it surely’ll be arduous to repeat. Initially, the Marlins punched above their weight final yr, which is saying one thing, as a result of an grownup marlin can weigh the higher a part of a ton. Additionally, they don’t have arms, or arms, or fists, which makes punching something above something fairly a problem.

Extra to the purpose, Miami went 84-78, which is tied for the fourth-fewest wins ever for a playoff workforce in a 162-game season. The Marlins additionally had a Pythagorean report of simply 75-87; they completed twentieth within the league in wRC+ and sixteenth in ERA-. Getting again to the playoffs in 2024 is a practical aim, however so as to obtain it the Marlins will most likely need to be higher this yr than they have been final.

The place will that enchancment come from? Not exterior acquisitions, which have amounted principally to buying and selling for Jonah Bride and Nick Gordon, hoping to extract no matter juice is left in Trey Mancini’s bat, and signing Tim Anderson — a transfer that appears suspiciously like a repeat of the Jean Segura experiment from a yr in the past.

Miami can have a full season from the pair of enormous, pleasant nook infielders it acquired final yr, Jake Burger and Josh Bell. But when the Marlins are to enhance in 2024, it’ll be due to the workforce’s proficient younger pitchers, who — happily — are quite a few.

The one I wish to speak about is a brief energy right-hander who’s spent a very long time on the sideline after a short MLB cameo. No, not Sixto Sánchez, who’s apparently pitching once more after throwing a grand complete of 1 skilled inning from 2021 to 2023.

I’m speaking about Max Meyer.

Meyer was the no. 3 general draft choose in 2020, getting into the Marlins group simply as Sánchez was about to take the league by storm. Listed at a minuscule 6 toes and 196 kilos, Meyer is a superb athlete for his dimension. He was a two-sport athlete in highschool (baseball and hockey) and a two-way participant in school — Minnesota, in case the hockey factor didn’t give it away. He boasted a triple-digit fastball in school, together with a plus-plus slider. As a freshman he was a multi-inning bullpen weapon on a Gophers workforce that made it to the tremendous regional spherical of the NCAA match, and over the following two years he developed into one of many nation’s finest energy arms.

An undersized, hockey-playing energy righty from a Large Ten faculty would possibly as properly have been made in a lab particularly to titillate my very own private biases. However don’t simply take my phrase for it: The Gophers have been variety sufficient to place collectively a sizzle reel within the leadup to Meyer’s draft marketing campaign.

Within the professionals, issues haven’t been fairly as easy. With no minor league baseball in 2020, Meyer took a bit of longer to achieve the majors than a top-five school arm ought to. And on a five-day workload, that upper-90s fastball backslid to the mid-90s. Even so, that’ll play. Notably contemplating that the Marlins acquired Meyer engaged on an average-to-plus changeup. And the slider remained unaffected.

After a 25-month draft-to-majors lead time, Meyer had a stable main league debut in July 2022, although the Phillies knocked him round a bit of the third time by means of the order. Sadly, he got here down with a nasty case of Wants Tommy John Syndrome simply 10 pitches into his second main league begin, and he hasn’t thrown in an everyday season recreation since.

However he’s throwing in spring coaching. Even with Sandy Alcantara out for the yr with a torn UCL of his personal, the Marlins have Jesús Luzardo, Eury Pérez, and (presuming his shoulder soreness isn’t terminal) Braxton Garrett on the high of their rotation. I’m skeptical of the A.J. Puk-return-to-the-rotation experiment, but when Trevor Rogers can pitch something like he did in his dominant rookie yr, or Edward Cabrera can decrease his stroll price from abominable to merely problematic, that’s a rotation you possibly can win with. The remainder of the workforce… we’ll see. However the rotation is promising.

Particularly if Meyer can contribute.

So what’s there to search for? Two issues, proper off the proverbial bat: How arduous is Meyer throwing? And is the slider intact?

So sure, metrically, every little thing seems to be proper on the cash. However that’s such a chilly approach of describing such an evocative pitch. I’ll be sincere, the middle subject digicam angle on the Yankees’ spring coaching ballpark, the place Meyer made his first begin of this preseason, is absolute rubbish. So that you’re probably not going to have the ability to make an apples-to-apples comparability visually except you have been there.

However, everybody loves gifs of breaking balls, and I goal to please. Right here’s Meyer getting Nick Castellanos to swing over a 91.7 mph slider in his main league debut. This was the toughest breaking ball Meyer has thrown within the majors.

And right here’s Meyer disgracing Anthony Volpe in public with a barely slower slider (88.9 mph) with the same motion profile.

The fastball additionally seems to be about the identical because it did in 2022. Which isn’t the best-case state of affairs; ideally, we’d need Meyer throwing nearer to what he was capable of handle at Minnesota. However with that breaking ball, 94-95 will play.

Meyer solely threw 5 changeups in opposition to the Yankees in his spring first outing, and close to as I can inform that pitch appears superb too. Although a pattern dimension that small is much more ineffective than your typical one spring coaching look with an indirect middle subject digicam angle.

One final thought on Meyer, who seems to be stable bodily in the mean time however nonetheless has subsequent to no expertise on the MLB stage.

Meyer throws three pitches: A four-seamer, a changeup, and the slider. All of them common 87 mph or extra. That’s uncommon. Final season, solely 14 pitchers threw all three of these pitches, all of them that tough. (Together with the opposite Mike Baumann, who’s by the way additionally from Minnesota.) Amongst these 14 pitchers are some elite starters (comparable to Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Alcantara, and Tyler Glasnow) and high-end relievers. The worst pitcher within the group might be Tyler Kinley.

So right here’s the place I begin to fear: None of these 14 pitchers throw solely these three pitches. Ten of them additionally throw a curveball. Of these 10, seven (everybody however Baumann, Alcantara, and Joe Kelly) have a hook that averaged 85 mph or much less final season. Brent Honeywell’s slider is a rounding error, and he throws his sweeper and screwball within the low 80s, so you possibly can cross him off the listing too.

The remaining six pitchers are Alcantara, Baumann, Kelly, Kinley, Gregory Santos, and Seranthony Domínguez.

Everybody besides Baumann and Kinley throws a sinker a minimum of as a co-primary fastball. Everybody besides Alcantara is a reliever. Everybody throws his fastball noticeably tougher than Meyer, who works principally in a window of about eight miles an hour.

I’d enterprise that along with producing nice motion, Meyer goes to need to be taught to vary speeds if he’s going to stay within the rotation. There’s time to be taught, in fact. However pretty much as good as he will be now, he’ll most likely must get even higher if he and the Marlins are going to get the place they need this season.