Will Sandy Alcantara be traded at the deadline? Why Marlins ace’s struggles could cause teams to shy away

One of the beautiful things about baseball is that there is no script. One of the frustrating things about baseball is … well, there is no script. Consider the case of Miami Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara. He entered the season regarded as the summer’s probable top trade candidate, to the extent that Marlins general manager Peter Bendix had to dismiss speculation in March. Alcantara had, only a few days prior, made his first big-league appearance since undergoing Tommy John surgery in fall 2023. And yet, a midseason trade to a contender felt like a certainty, a fait accompli.

Alcantara may still get traded ahead of the July 31 deadline, but if he does the circumstances will differ greatly from expectations. He’ll take the mound today against the Cincinnati Reds sporting a 7.01 ERA (62 ERA+) and a 1.91 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first 17 starts this season. His contributions have been worth an estimated 1.4 wins below replacement, according to Baseball Reference’s calculations. Only one pitcher with more than 60 innings has fared worse: Red Sox right-hander Walker Buehler.

Alcantara, 29, had provided hope he was correcting his course in June. He strung together a four-game stretch that saw him compile a 2.74 ERA and nearly four strikeouts per walk. Alas, he’s since surrendered 12 runs in 12 innings against the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers. Nothing is coming easy these days for Alcantara, not even the convenient pre-deadline narratives. As such, interested parties now have a puzzle to solve before they agree to any particular swap.

It’s no longer a matter of how much teams value Alcantara; now, it’s about what ails him, and whether or not his performance can be fixed before the playoffs roll around. With that in mind, let’s do our part by examining three issues with Alcantara’s season.

1. Four-seamer’s reduced effectiveness

Alcantara has never been a strikeout artist. Even at the peak of his powers, when he won the Cy Young Award in 2022, he struck out fewer than 25% of the batters he faced. He’ll enter today’s start with a would-be career-worst 17.4% K rate that puts him near the bottom of the league for starting pitchers. That’s the result of his contact and chase rates veering off in the wrong directions:

What’s worrisome here is that every pitch in his arsenal except his curveball — an offering he used just 64 times the last time he was a regular — has lost swing-and-miss potency compared to his last full season in 2023. There is one offering, his four-seamer, that has suffered the most:

Whenever you see a four-seamer’s whiff rate plummet like that following elbow surgery, it’s fair to wonder about velocity. Alcantara’s remains strong (97.4 mph on average), but it is down 0.6 mph from 2023. The actual issue here appears to be a change in both shape and location.

Alcantara’s arm angle is lower than it was in the past, and in turn, his four-seamer has lost some rise and gained more run. His heater has long had dead-zone properties, but this is the first time his four-seamer has featured a greater amount of horizontal break (14.8 inches) than vertical break (13 inches induced). Likely as a result, his average location on his four-seamer has changed. Whereas 10% or fewer of his four-seamers were classified by TruMedia as residing in the lower half of the zone in 2022-23, that percentage is up over 20% so far this year. 

If either or both of those tweaks were intentional, they aren’t working as intended. Alcantara will enter tonight with opponents hitting .288 and slugging .525 off his four-seamer, as opposed to the .259 and .468 marks he posted in 2023.

2. Struggles versus lefties

The decline of Alcantara’s four-seamer has had some obvious ramifications elsewhere in his game. 

In recent years, Alcantara has leaned on his four-seamer against lefties, throwing it around 30% of the time. He’s had to reduce that usage rate to around 24% so far this season. In response, he’s thrown fewer changeups too, opting instead for more sliders and curveballs. That shift hasn’t been favorable to his performance against lefties. Take a look at his marks compared to his last three full seasons:

How bad is that strikeout-to-walk ratio? It’s the third-worst rate versus lefties among pitchers with at least 10 starts this season:

1. Randy Vásquez, San Diego Padres, 0.74
2. Antonio Senzatela, Colorado Rockies, 1.00
3. Sandy Alcantara, Miami Marlins, 1.07
4. Brayan Bello, Boston Red Sox, 1.13
5. Mitchell Parker, Washington Nationals, 1.25

It’s fair to write that if Alcantara wants to get back on track, he’ll need to find a remedy to improve his performance without the platoon advantage — be it by again tweaking his four-seamer or experimenting with his overall pitch mix.

3. Fewer ground balls, yet more finding holes

When you think of Alcantara, you might think of a sinkerballer who tends to run ground-ball percentages north of 50%. That hasn’t been the case this season. His 44.6% ground-ball rate would tie the lowest of his career. Undoubtedly, part of that stems from the issues covered above. 

For the sake of this subheading, there’s an adjacent topic worth highlighting: Alcantara’s poor performance on the grounders he is generating. His current .270 average against on batted balls would represent the worst mark of his career. (He posted a .256 average in 2018.)

As you’ll note, Alcantara isn’t giving up any harder contract than he did in 2023 and only slightly harder contract than he did in 2022. Yet his average is 30 points higher this season than his last, and nearly 100 points higher than in his Cy Young-winning season.

It may be tempting to look at the numbers above and wonder if the fault lies not with Alcantara, but with Miami’s infield defense. That doesn’t appear to be the case. On the whole — as in, even with Alcantara’s figures included — the Marlins have surrendered a .245 average on batted balls classified as grounders. The league-average mark? You guessed it, .245.

So, to recap: Alcantara’s four-seamer has declined in property and deployment. That decline has caused him to be far worse overall, but especially worse against lefties as the shifts he’s made to cover for the decay have failed him. And, on top of that, a past strength is now a weakness for reasons that are tough to pin down.

Is there a way to fix all of that, and can it be achieved in-season? That’s what teams have to answer over the coming weeks.