What Don Mattingly and teammates are saying about 6 rookies playing key roles for Marlins

With Edward Cabrera on the mound and four other rookies in the lineup backing him up, the Miami Marlins kept their eyes on the future Tuesday when they continued their three-game series against the San Diego Padres.

It’s where they’ve once again fallen to with 10 losses in 14 games to start August — the Marlins started the day 13 games out of Wild Card position — and the individual performances of Miami’s young players now provides as much intrigue as the actual results of the games.

Cabrera, 24, is living up to the expectations he had as the No. 34 prospect in MLB.com’s rankings at the start of the year. Braxton Garrett, 25, is coming on strong, too, and starting to look something like the pitcher the Marlins expected him to be when he was a top 50 prospect back in 2017.

JJ Bleday, Miami’s No. 5 prospect, hit his third home run Monday. Peyton Burdick, the No. 10 prospect in the organization, is regularly starting in the outfield. Even more unheralded prospects like Nick Fortes and Charles LeBlanc are delivering memorable moments in another lost season.

They’re all becoming a focus in the final months of this year.

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Edward Cabrera

A year ago, catcher Jacob Stallings was in the opposite dugout when Cabrera made the fifth appearance of his career and Stallings’ Pittsburgh Pirates got the best of him — albeit without tagging him for an earned run and while racking up seven strikeouts. The Pirates collected five hits and three walks, and knocked the starting pitcher out of the game after just four innings by getting three unearned runs.

“He was more of a thrower, really seemed like he was trying to throw as hard as he could,” Stallings said. “He’s so much more under control now.”

In his sixth start of the season, Cabrera tossed four scoreless innings, while striking out seven, and giving up just three hits and two walks to help the Marlins beat the San Diego Padres, 4-3, in front of 9,065 at loanDepot park in Miami. The right-handed pitcher’s ERA is down to 1.78 and he has 36 strikeouts in 30 1/3 innings, despite missing nearly two months with right elbow tendinitis.

After now catching him a handful of times, Stallings has a lofty comparison for the Dominican starter.

“He’s kind of like Sandy [Alcantara] in that he can get guys out in so many different ways,” Stallings said. “He has a slider, curveball and changeup that’s disgusting and obviously a four-seamer, two-seamer with really good velo.”

Braxton Garrett

Although he’s still technically a rookie, Garrett has now appeared in three MLB seasons and the value of experience is clear.

After mostly sticking to two pitches in each of the last two years, Garrett now has a real three-pitch mix with his fastball and sinker developing into reliable complements to his slider.

“He can do so many different things,” Stallings said. “The slider is obviously his best pitch, but in Philly the other day his slider wasn’t really on for him, and he’s still able to give you quality innings because his two-seam and his sinker were really good.”

Garrett, who was the No. 7 overall pick in the 2016 MLB draft, now has a 3.67 ERA in 13 starts and he has gotten better as the year has progressed. At the end of June, the starting pitcher’s ERA was 5.24.

As a veteran, Stallings said his job with Cabrera and Garrett is to keep pushing them out of their comfort zone.

“Honestly, a lot of times you learn most from failure, not that you’re out there trying to fail, but sometimes that’s where the greatest teaching moments come from, maybe if they rely too much on one pitch one day or trust another pitch and not another,” Stallings said. “Those are all really good learning moments for those guys.”

JJ Bleday and Peyton Burdick

Bleday, 24, hit his third home run in 89 plate appearances Monday and is up to nine extra-base hits, but the slugging potential isn’t what stands out most to Don Mattingly.

“What I see is a guy with a good idea of how to handle an at-bat,” the manager said. “He’s a guy that kind of has an idea of what they’re trying to do to him, has an idea of what he wants to do and so he’s ahead of the game from that standpoint, from a lot of the young guys that we’ve seen in the past come up. He’s got a really good feel for what he’s wanting to do up there, he’s got a good eye, which leads to him getting himself better pitches to hit, things like that, and it gives him a better chance to be more productive, so not just an extra-base hit.”

Bleday, who was the No. 4 overall pick in the 2019 MLB draft, is entered Tuesday batting just .215, but his extra-base ability has already made him an above-average hitter, according to adjusted OPS, which adjusts for park factors. The outfielder was slugging .418 with a .721 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.

Burdick, 24, was batting just .171, but made his 12th start since Aug. 5 and delivered the game-winning RBI in the seventh inning.

Nick Fortes and Charles LeBlanc

In the same series when Stallings faced Cabrera, Fortes, coincidentally, his debut.

It was a memorable one, too: The catcher belted a home run, collected two hits, drove in a pair of runs and scored once.

Fortes’ hitting ability, then, was no surprise to Stallings when the Marlins called him back up in May. What Stallings has come to appreciate most about the former fourth-round pick is his willingness to learn and desire to improve defensively.

“He works really hard at it,” Stallings said. “He takes the game plan really seriously. If I have more history against a team, he’ll ask good questions or if I played the day before he’ll ask me what I saw, so he’s really good about that kind of stuff, and I think that’s the hardest part for a young catcher is game planning and learning to manage a pitching staff.”

The offense hasn’t gone anywhere, either. Fortes crushed two more home runs Tuesday and is now batting .259 with a .789 OPS.

LeBlanc, 26, has been the biggest surprise of this rookie crop. The Canadian infielder was just a fourth-round pick and never ranked among any organization’s top 30 prospects, yet he entered Tuesday with a .378 batting average and .938 OPS.

“At this point,” Mattingly said, “he hasn’t done anything that says he’s not a Major League player.”

Marlins activate reliever Cole Sulser

Miami’s bullpen got a bit of a boost Tuesday with the return of Cole Sulser. The relief pitcher hadn’t pitched since June due to a right lat strain and had a 3.86 ERA before landing on the IL.

The Marlins designated fellow relief pitcher Parker Bugg for assignment to make room for Sulser.

Up next

Miami wraps up its three-game series against the San Diego Padres at 4:10 p.m. at loanDepot park.

The Marlins will send out starting pitcher Pablo Lopez to face Padres starting pitcher Mike Clevinger in Miami.