Stormy Weathers

 

Ryan Weathers must feel like he booked a last minute ticket for the Titanic and was in the bathroom at the exact time they started filling up the lifeboats.

Luis Arraez got traded to the Padres, and is now hitting .300 with them and helping them compete, and Weathers is still stuck in Miami getting the snot kicked out of him every 5 days on a team with no run support. And it's only gonna get worse as the season goes on.

Writing about the Marlins used to be fun. It was fun just last year. And now it's just depressing. This team could have been great, they could have built something with all the pieces that made 2023 work, and now they're just struggling. The team's most valuable player right now is Max Meyer, who made three starts then went back to Jacksonville. Nobody has a 1 WAR right now but 9 people have -0.5 and below WARs, including a guy they paid actual money for during the offseason. In fact, the Marlins are paying 44,330,000 to people who have a 0 WAR or lower. Josh Bell, Tim Anderson, Jake Burger, Christian Bethancourt, Avisail Garcia, all weighing this team down.

How does that reflect on the young players who are actually trying? Ryan Weathers has finally been given the opportunity to start every day, and he's done relatively well, with a 4.54 ERA and 34 Ks. But with no run support and a lot of superior teams, he's racked up a lot of earned runs and he's not winning many games. Jesus Luzardo's similar, the raw materials are there but without the team he's not very impressive. Trevor Rogers is 0-6. Braxton Garrett got rocked in his first start. A rotation that felt so realized even after Alcantara got hurt last year now looks lost and completely unsteady. And this is how it is with a lot of injured players reinstated. 

There are some positive production aspects. Bryan de la Cruz and Jazz Chisholm ARE doing well as power pieces. Otto Lopez and Dane Myers have been very nice off the bench. Tristan Gray is hopefully gonna come into his own, despite being a 28-year-old rookie. There's still no good hitting catchers on this team, no starter hitting over .270, and no real perennial on-base guy now that Luis Arraez is gone. And, again, this is how bad the team looks in May.

I...can only hope for some improvement, something to click, but I'm not sure if it's happening this year. And it's sad, cause they actually looked good last year. Apparently they only do this when nobody's expecting them to.

Coming Tonight: A late signer that's looking like an incredible asset playing for a bad team.