One need only glance at the Marlins’ projected starters over the next few days to determine where the team could use an upgrade. Jose Urena, a hard-throwing right-hander whose stuff hasn’t translated to strikeouts out of the bullpen or in the rotation, will pitch tonight’s game. Tomorrow, Jarred Cosart is scheduled to pitch — and he has a 15% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate over his career. The Marlins apparently didn’t like the look of that situation going forward, especially if Jose Fernandez’s innings need to be managed and/or if Wei-Yin Chen is unable to return from the disabled list soon.

So, they’ve conducted a trade, which reportedly includes the following pieces (arranged in approximate order of name-recognition):

The Marlins get:

• Andrew Cashner
• Colin Rea
• Tayron Guerrero

The Padres get:

• Jarred Cosart
• Carter Capps
• Josh Naylor
• Luis Castillo

As for the Marlins, they receive an immediate boost from adding Cashner to the rotation. While his season numbers (which include a 4.76 ERA and 4.94 FIP) look pretty ugly, Cashner seemed to have boosted his trade value over the last few weeks. As August Fagerstrom noted recently, he’s been much better since coming off the disabled list:

Cashner’s picked up a half-tick on his average fastball. Pre-disabled list, 15% of his fastballs went 96 or harder. These last four starts, he’s reached that upper-tier of velocity on 21% of fastballs. The walks are down from a bit over 9% to a bit under 6%. The strikeouts are way up, from 15% to 28%, because Cashner is missing plenty more bats. He’s missing more bats inside the zone, perhaps due in part to the added life on the heater, and he’s missing more bats outside the zone, and that’s because of the slider. The slider is really what this is all about.

Cashner’s slider has been more effective of late, and if he can maintain his current run, he should be able to hit his roughly league-average projections and represent an improvement over where the team stands right now. If the playoffs started today, the Marlins would be in, playing in a one-game playoff with the Cardinals for the right to play the Dodgers in another one-game playoff to qualify for the divisional series.

However, the projections see the Cardinals as the better team going forward. They actually see the same for the Mets, who are a game and a half behind the Marlins and Cardinals. The chart below shows the playoff odds before the trade for the teams that look to be in the hunt for the second wild card. The Marlins are in orange, essentially in a dead heat with the Mets and behind the Cardinals.

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Know this — Dave Dombrowski likes to make trades. He was first named a general manager back on July 5, 1988, assuming the title of “youngest GM in the game” back before it was cool with the Montreal Expos. He made his first trade on July 13. His aggressive nature was sometimes just off center stage, as the teams he had previously helmed — the Expos, Marlins and Tigers — have rarely been media darlings. But now he is running the Red Sox, and they get plenty of coverage. While that level of coverage might not be fair or warranted, his deals are being scrutinized hard these days. Is he gutting the farm system? Or does Dombrowski know how to pick ’em? I thought I’d take an objective stab at his trade record.
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This is stupid. I mean, honestly, I think it’s kind of smart, but the subject is stupid. This is arguing semantics on account of a single pitch thrown in an exhibition baseball game that, no matter what they say, doesn’t really matter. Just — I want you to understand, up front, there isn’t a real good point for this. This post needn’t exist, but I’m a pitching dork, and a pitch in Tuesday’s All-Star Game captured the attention of my dorkiness. It was the most talked-about pitch of the contest. This is how Jose Fernandez started David Ortiz in the third inning:

The thing to notice is that “80” down there. Sometimes, Jose Fernandez throws 80 mile-per-hour breaking balls. This wasn’t one of them. Ortiz said Fernandez threw a changeup. Fernandez smiled and said he threw a fastball. Obviously, it wasn’t a normal fastball. The normal fastball buzzes 96. So, did Fernandez actually throw a changeup, or a slow fastball? I believe the evidence points to the latter. I warned you this would be stupid.

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Most All-Stars weren’t born into baseball this way. Most of them had to alter their approach, or their mechanics, in order to find that a-ha moment. They threw a pitch differently, or decided to pull the ball more, or changed their swing, and then found a run of sustained success that put them in the All-Star game that’s being played tonight.

So, given fairly fettered access to the All-Stars from both leagues, that was the question I posed: what was the big adjustment, mechanical or approach-wise, that brought you to this podium today?

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The Miami Marlins have traded white-hot RHP Chris Paddack to San Diego in exchange for Fernando Rodney. Paddack was an eighth-round draftee in 2015 and was signed for a $400,000 bonus. He dominated prep competition at Cedar Park High School in Texas, striking out 134 hitters in 75 innings during his senior year. He fell to the eighth round, in part, because he was 19-and-a-half on draft day. He was also a fastball/changeup guy without great breaking-ball feel. Arms like that tend to slot after fastball/breaking-ball pitchers because orgs think it’s easier to develop a changeup over time than it is to learn how to break off a curveball.

Paddack was solid during Gulf Coast League play after he signed last summer but looked so good this spring that Miami let him bypass the New York-Penn League and sent him straight to Low-A. He had made some physical strides, strengthening his lower half and repeating a delivery that was often inconsistent and stiff in high school. The results this season have been staggering: 48 strikeouts and just 2 walks — plus only nine hits allowed — in 28.1 innings over six starts. Paddack hasn’t allowed a hit in his last three starts and two of those came in consecutive appearances against a Rome lineup that failed to make adjustments to his stuff or sequencing.

A broad-shouldered 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, Paddack has a well-paced, easy delivery. He commands a low-90s fastball – with terrific plane and run, which help the pitch play as plus – to both sides of the plate and has been up to 95. The meal-ticket secondary pitch here is the changeup. It’s already plus and Paddack will use it against both lefties and righties. It’s difficult to identify out of his hand, dies as it reaches the plate.

Perhaps one of the key components of Paddack’s step forward this season has been the development of a curveball. Paddack struggled to find consistency with any sort of breaking ball in high school and public-sector reports on what he was throwing were all over the place. Dan Farnsworth’s offseason Marlins prospect list had Paddack presciently ranked as the #2 player in the system but listed the breaking ball as a slider. The curveball Paddack throws is of the 12-6 variety and rests in the 73-77 mph range. It’s a fringe-average offering right now but is flashing average and should mature there, though Paddack’s expedient breaking-ball improvement might be a sign that the pitch has more development in the tank than is typical.

When pitches get away from Paddack they do so up in the zone, and while pitch movement has been his saving grace in those situations — and while he’s still been able to miss bats — it may become more of an issue at the upper levels. He’ll also have to improve upon sequencing and pitch usage, but Paddack is just a year removed from high school and it isn’t reasonable to expect much more than he’s shown to this point.

There are also those who think sudden upticks in velocity like the one Paddack has experienced over the last several months are harbingers of ulnar-collateral doom but there’s nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to support that and Paddack’s build and delivery don’t sound any alarms.

I think, given Paddack’s relatively short track record of success and the fact that he’s just a year removed from high school, there’s still a good bit of risk associated with his prospectdom, but he has mid-rotation stuff right now and that changeup might just continue to improve.

Grades
Fastball: 60/60
Changeup: 60/65
Curveball: 45/50
Control/Command: 45/50+
FV: 50

When the Marlins inked Wei-Yin Chen to a five year, $80 million deal this offseason they weren’t signing an ace or a workhorse. During his four previous seasons, Chen registered an ERA-, FIP-, or xFIP- better than 90 just once and he maxed out at 192.2 innings in 2012. Chen made a name for himself from 2012 to 2015 as an exemplar of consistency. Above average, but not great. Reliable, but not remarkable.

For $80 million, an opt-out clause, and a vesting option, the Marlins added someone worthy of slotting in behind Jose Fernandez without tying up significant payroll in one of the offseason’s superstar pitchers. Chen probably wouldn’t have been noticed walking down the street in any major-league city other than Baltimore, but front offices and coaching staffs certainly knew the value he could bring to one of those cities.

Yet the early returns on Chen have been somewhat disappointing for the Marlins. He’s running a career worst ERA-, FIP-, cFIP, and DRA over his first 15 starts of 2016. The only major run estimator by which he hasn’t suffered so far this year is xFIP-, which provides a very easy entry point into his struggles: it’s the home-run rate, mostly.

Chen’s never been known for his home-run prevention, registering a HR/9 above the MLB average in each of his major league seasons. Part of that has to do with pitching in Baltimore and in the AL East, but he’s someone who allows a greater share than most of batted balls in the air, and home runs can often come with that territory. This year, his home-run rate has increased at a rate even greater than the MLB average. Granted, the difference between his 2016 HR/9 and his career average HR/9 is something like four home runs over his 86.1 innings this year. Those four home runs happened, but it’s not like we’re looking at an Anibal Sanchez-level event here.

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Last week, there was a little event you may have heard about called the “summer solstice.” Both calendars and my elementary-school science classes tell me that means summer just officially began. There are a few basic truths about summer’s infancy: children in your community may currently be in a state of euphoria; it’s time to plan July 4th barbeques; and, most relevant to our shared interests here at FanGraphs, there is still a lot of major-league baseball left to be played this year. As a result, the standings are largely inconsequential at the moment and still subject to massive changes before the postseason rolls around. And, yet, I’m struck by this meaningless triviality: if the season were to end today, the Miami Marlins would be a Wild Card team.

It’s not the most shocking scenario imaginable. The Marlins weren’t among the handful of rebuilding National League teams whose playoff aspirations were written off before the season even began. After all, the team boasted popular preseason picks for MVP and Cy Young in Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez, respectively. But this is also a team which last finished above .500 when Bryce Harper was a high-school sophomore… It wasn’t hard to have doubts that the Marlins would finally capitalize on their talent and actually field a winning team this summer, but the club is currently doing its part to help people forget those doubts. This past weekend, the Marlins took three out of four from the suddenly mortal Cubs to bring their record up to 41-35 and put them into a second place tie in the National League East with the scuffling Mets.

Due to the unpredictable nature of injuries and on-field performance, no team is able to perfectly execute a preseason plan — players get hurt, stars underperform and role players have breakout years — and the Marlins are no exception. One of those unexpected developments for the Marlins is that they’ve fielded one of the best outfields in the league due much less to the contributions of Stanton (currently in the midst of a career-worst season) and much more to Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich. It’s been a well–covered storyline for the Marlins.

There’s another key way in which the Marlins have had to deviate from their preseason plan, too — namely, who they’ve played at second base.

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I don’t know you, but I know you didn’t spend last night watching the Marlins and the Padres. Tom Koehler won. Jeff Mathis hit a grand slam. The most interesting player who appeared for the Padres allowed Jeff Mathis to hit a grand slam. The Marlins aren’t bad, and I know even the worst team in the majors is a team of elites, but, look, there’s compelling baseball and there’s less compelling baseball, and the game didn’t have much of a draw. The Padres did try to rally a bit in the seventh, but they wasted a runner on third with nobody out.

That runner reached by drawing a walk. He was stranded in large part because the two following batters struck out. The Marlins reliever in charge of the inning was one Kyle Barraclough. For the fifth consecutive appearance, he struck out multiple hitters. For the 13th consecutive appearance, he struck out at least one hitter. For the 16th time in his last 18 appearances, he walked at least one hitter. Don’t worry if you didn’t know anything about Barraclough before. You’re about to learn. Really, you already have.

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If you’d kind of forgotten about Ichiro Suzuki, I totally get it. I mean, he’s undeniably been an icon, but as far as his remaining a major-leaguer goes, he’s in his 40s, and he’s spent time on the bench for a team that doesn’t get a lot of attention. The league is awash with young, premium talent, and in the Marlins’ own outfield, Ichiro’s behind three young players of considerable ability. And, you know, there was this:

The wizardry had become less and less apparent. I assume that, once you’re a wizard, you’re always a wizard, but Ichiro had perhaps grown weary of using his magic. Or maybe it just takes him longer to recover his mana. He’s been chasing 3,000 big-league hits, and that’s a hell of a milestone, but when the Marlins elected to bring Ichiro back, many figured it was just a publicity stunt, a way to squeeze some profit out of a deteriorating player’s pursuit of history. That tells you something about how people see the Marlins, but that also tells you something about how people saw Ichiro.

I’m now going to embed the same plot as above, only with one extra line segment. Ichiro! is re-earning his exclamation point.

42 years old. The gap between Ichiro and Christian Yelich is old enough to vote.

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Just as much as we’ve trained ourselves not to take Spring Training stats at face value, we should also by now have trained ourselves not to take player and manager Spring Training quotes at face value. Words are words, and until those words become actions, they’re not super fun to consume or analyze. Like, here’s a few examples pulled from a preseason story by the excellent Clark Spencer, with expectations for the upcoming season inferred from comments by star pitcher Jose Fernandez and manager Don Mattingly.

Spring Training Report #1

• Expectation: “He just might not resort to his fastball quite as much…”
• Reality: Fernandez’s fastball rate is mostly unchanged, and in fact is slightly above (52%) his previous career-high (51%).

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