Marlins urged to deal team's 1 remaining superstar this winter

Feb 17, 2024; Jupiter, FL, USA; Miami Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix watches during a spring training workout at the Marlins Player Development & Scouting Complex. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

Just one season removed from the Miami Marlins' second playoff appearance in 20-plus years, the team once again appears headed for the Major League Baseball cellar. 

An organization that has seemingly been in a perpetual rebuilding mode for the majority of this century is starting from scratch once again. 

A bevy of deals during a doomed 2024 campaign has once again left fans reaching for their scorecards to put names to the faces of the players making up Miami's roster — save one, and it is a name that many Major League Baseball followers may have forgotten about. 

One-time Marlins staff ace Sandy Alcántara, whose Cy Young-winning campaign helped lead the team to the 2022 postseason, was the toast of MLB before an awful 2023 campaign was cut short by an ulnar collateral ligament injury in his right throwing elbow that eventually required Tommy John surgery.

Alcántara missed the entire 2024 season as the Marlins fell to the bottom of the National League East division with the fourth 100-loss season in the organization's 32-year history.

The 29-year-old progressed well through surgery and rehabilitation and has his eyes set on being ready for Opening Day 2025, according to Christina De Nicola or MLB.com.

However, Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report believes it would be best for Alcántara to make his next MLB start for a different team and urges the Marlins to trade away the two-time All-Star this winter. 

Alcántara is due to make $17.5 million this coming season.  Miller notes that salary is "nothing" for a big-market contender but is ludicrous for a frugal franchise like the Marlins.

"A team that has an ample supply of viable options for its starting rotation, virtually no hope of making the 2025 postseason, and an average Opening Day payroll of $74.1M over the past 12 seasons? That's too much, and it feels almost inevitable that they're going to make him available to the highest bidder," Miller states. 

However, any deal that occurs this winter — before Alcántara can show whether or not he can return to the 2.28 ERA, 207 strikeout form of 2022 — would be selling for pennies on the dollar.

If Alcántara returns to form much the way another Dominican native — Luis Gil of the New York Yankees — did in his return from Tommy John surgery, Miami would be far better off trading him for a king's ransom at the 2025 trade deadline.

Keeping Alcántara does bear some risk, however. If the seventh-year Marlin returns only to pitch the way he did in 2023, when his ERA blossomed to 4.14, then Miami would be stuck with an albatross of a contract for the next two seasons.

More MLB: Cardinals net key Yankees starter in blockbuster trade proposal