Miami Marlins
Edward Cabrera gives Miami ‘a lot to be excited about’ as it thinks about 2022 rotation
Edward Cabrera walked off the field at loanDepot park on Tuesday after shagging fly balls for the first time as a Miami Marlin, and stopped in front of a row of clicking cameras and recording cell phones. The pitcher paused for about 10 minutes and answered questions about his impending debut, almost exclusively in his native Spanish.
At the very start, he made an exception. It was pretty easy to express how he was feeling about his upcoming Wednesday debut.
“A lot of excitement,” he said through a smile.
It’s the way the whole organization feels ahead of Cabrera’s MLB debut against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, manager Don Mattingly said. Cabrera is the No. 30 overall prospect in baseball, according to MLB.com’s rankings, and his arrival gives the Marlins another important thread to follow while they play out the final six weeks of a lost season, especially as they dropped their eighth straight Tuesday.
Cabrera’s debut won’t just be a spot start, Mattingly said. Miami’s plan is to have the right-handed pitcher spend the rest of the regular season in the Majors, setting up Cabrera to make as many as seven starts the rest of the way.
“Now seems to be the right time because,” Mattingly said. “I don’t think they wanted to do it until they felt like he had enough, and we were ready to put him in and leave him in.”
Cabrera, 23, has made 13 starts this year across three levels, posting a 2.93 ERA with 92 strikeouts in 61 1/3 innings. In six starts with Triple A Jacksonville, Cabrera has held his own, posting a 3.68 ERA with 48 strikeouts in 19 1/3 innings, including a trio of 11- or 12-strikeout games in the last month.
With Miami fully looking toward the future in the final month-plus of the season, the Marlins will get a chance to get an up-close look at Cabrera against Major League competition and Cabrera will get a chance to acclimate himself to life in the Majors.
Miami will also, ideally, get a chance to finally look at a fully formed rotation after injuries decimated its starting staff this year. All-Star starting pitcher Trevor Rogers made the first of two planned rehab starts Tuesday and should return to the Majors next week after spending time on the bereavement list. Starting pitcher Pablo Lopez is also set to make another rehab start Thursday in Jacksonville as he recovers from a right rotator cuff strain. By the middle of September, the Marlins could send out a rotation consisting of Rogers, Lopez, Cabrera and fellow pitchers Sandy Alcantara, Jesus Luzardo and Elieser Hernandez — a six-man rotation, Mattingly said, is a possibility.
Although Luzardo gave up another five runs in the Marlins’ 5-1 loss to the Nationals on Tuesday, all six are young enough to factor into Miami’s long-term plans.
“In the not-too-distant future, we’re going to have all our guys,” he said. “It’s going to be nice to be able to see what this rotation kind of looks like.”
After rookie starting pitcher Sixto Sanchez lost his entire 2021 season to a shoulder injury, Cabrera emerged as Miami’s top pitching prospect by building on his breakthrough 2019 with 13.5 strikeouts per nine innings in the minors. The 6-foot-5, 217-pound rookie had his own setbacks this year, though, and missed all of spring training because of a biceps injury, which kept him out until June.
He started his year with six shutout innings for Class A Jupiter, followed it by posting a 2.77 ERA in five starts for Double A Pensacola and finally proved himself MLB-worthy with the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.
“It wasn’t an easy task, this whole year,” he said through an interpreter. “When I came up to Jupiter, I started feeling a little better there and then when they sent me to Triple A, I was able to adapt, so at that moment, when I was feeling more adapted to the league, that’s when I felt a little bit ready for this moment.”
The news, delivered Sunday by Jumbo Shrimp manager Al Pedrique in a now-viral video, still came as a surprise to Cabrera.
“I didn’t anticipate this,” he said. “It was something that I always had on my mind, but I never expected that one.”
Cabrera, who has a pair of matching tattoos with Sanchez on their necks and left wrists, said the injured starter reached out and told him “to work your butt” to make the most of the opportunity.
While Cabrera now joins a team just hoping to climb out of the National League East cellar, the Marlins don’t believe they’re far from getting back to the MLB postseason after making the expanded field in 2020. The pitching staff, including Cabrera and Sanchez, is the biggest reason why.
A year ago, Miami gave Rogers and Sanchez their first tastes of the Majors. Rogers took his experience and harnessed it to become a frontrunner for an MLB Rookie of the Year Award, while Sanchez began the season on the list of favorites before his right shoulder started to act up in the spring.
Miami envisions the same sort of boost for Cabrera.
“Obviously it’s a lot to be excited about. It’s big stuff,” Mattingly said. “It’s exciting to be able to see him in the rotation and really to give him this opportunity to get more experience. That’s going to be, I think, huge for him.”
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