Sandy, the era rises behind us

Sandy Alcantara should be the last bastion of a traditional starting pitcher, the guy who pumped gasoline started hell or high water. Today, the stoic, painful antidote to Expete, the three-layer soft Five-Spirit Starter. Alcantara has thrown more in the 2022 CY Young campaign than any other NBA pitcher since 2015, and he did, while working harder than any other starter in the league that year. Oh yeah man, that's the stuff.

A mild 2023 ended with a torn UCL, which prevented Alcantara from playing for the rare Marlins playoffs. But he is back now, ready to remind the world of 220 games a year.

At the beginning of six times, Miami Ace's era was 8.31. His strikeout rate dropped to 15.8%, about two-thirds of his peak, and his walking rate was 14.2%, which is awful that you don't need context to appreciate it.

Hachi Machi.

At the beginning of the season, even an era of up to 8.31 wasn't necessarily an emergency. Alcantara allowed 24 runs throughout the season. A few bad calls, a few hits, maybe a 40-shot first inning, some bad sequencing luck – the rich stuff will add up soon, and in six starts, there isn't much time to achieve.

But Alcantara has been very poor this season. He allowed multiple runs to win, three walks four or more hitters, and he entered the sixth inning twice. His last out was against the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, Alcantara allowed three innings in the first and three innings in the second and three more games in the third, and he didn't finish. If a series of single innings are picket fences, I posted on the audience's cricket on the Blues, the Dodgers put an Art Nouveau railing on 2022 Cy Young Winner. The game got so fast that both teams had a position player.

Although Alcantara won the award, Alcantara never won the award, but he never won the award, but he never brought up a three-pointer to the championship. Here, two things worry me: Alcantara's orders and the quality of connection he gave up. I've mentioned a 14.2% walk rate; Alcantara is also operating a .426 rival Xwobacon (who is .315 at his younger age) and 6.39 Xera.

In most cases, it's nice to see a struggling pitcher performing less than twice. Of course, this is unfortunate and everything will be forgiven soon. Not many here. The title number is that even in a small sample, Alcantara allows XERA to be 6.39. That's really bad!

Even with Tommy John's surgery, Alcantara's speed remains. His four sales are half a mile slower than in 2022 and 2023, but he has more and more spins and moves. I call it a wash; either way, if you can't live at 97 with a 15-inch arm side running, you should get rid of the show business.

At his summit, Alcantara threw four pitches in roughly equal proportions – a four hole, a sinker, a slider and a change. In 2025 (more like September 2023, but this is before he was injured), he added a curveball.

I'm a little cold to the idea of ​​Alcantara throwing a second breakout, especially in the mid-80s curve, both axes below average and are barely suitable for his slider changes in any way. Then there is the danger of two circuit breakers fusing together with each other. As a record, I don't think this is what happened. Even though the Alcantara's slider is faster than ever and actually broke the arm slightly this year, it always has very strict up and down movements.

If you told me that Alcantara's curveball was a disaster, more or less fully responsible for double his era, I would believe you trust you based solely on the rotation and action numbers.

Except: Curve balls are the only pitch that does not suffer heavy hits. This is one of his two pitches – the substitution is another ball, which is not absolutely crushed.

I have some openness to the possibility of causing negative interactions in Alcantara's tone combination, or the slight differences in rotation speed or movement make him even more painful. But not to this extent.

The same is true for his mechanism. Alcantara is very consistent with his ending and position on the mound. He started with the right heel on the left side of the rubber, just like he did in 2022 and 2023. His arm slots are several lower this year than in 2022 and 2023, which may explain the different shapes on his fastball, but only a few degrees. In the movie, the difference is almost impossible to detect.

This year, Alcantara is very bad, and I hardly want to attribute his misfortune to one reason, but the most obvious evidence I can find comes in a key position: his commands are backed up, and they are terrible.

After running the number of % of the region in almost 53% of the career, Alcantara will throw 51.8% in the region this year. This isn't particularly troubling in itself, but PitchingBot lowered Alcantara's order from 62 of the two seasons so far this year to 48. If you look at the position+, he will rise from 105 in 2023 to 89 in 2025.

During his young year and his season, Alcantara was elite speed and threw incredible handrail side things (changes and pendants) in a lot of innings. But, in terms of lack of bats or producing weak contact, he was never on the table. Basically, he's just average or better yet, over 220 innings per year, and these tiny successes add up.

One thing Alcantara can do better than almost anyone in the league is to get the batsman to chase. They are in 2021, 2022 and 2023 in more than one-third of Alcantara outside the strike zone. Alcantara's pursuit rate was in the 94th percentile or higher in these three seasons.

This year, Alcantara's opponents swung on 25% of the court outside the strike zone, the 23rd percentile. He tends to be more in the middle of the plate when he throws the court in the strike zone. The meatball rate in Alcantara (showing the middle middle) rose from 7.2% in 2023 to 8.8% in 2025. His percentage of pitches in the heart attack zone rose from 27.2% to 29.8%. When batsmen swing on the field in the area, their Xwoba is .475, up from .327 in 2022.

Sometimes, after a long period of layoffs, orders are the last thing to come back. A pitcher who is used to throwing away Alcantara can be particularly prone to rust. Maybe Alcantara is just a little off, like a football player coming back from the ACL tear and needs to get back to clarity.

If so, this is a non-story. The Marlins don’t have anywhere this year, with or without Alcantara. He will sign next season. If Alcantara can return to pre-injury form at the end of the season, everyone will long forget about his ugly April when he breaks into the trade market, free agent market or both.

It's best to be rusted. Because if Alcantara did all the same things in 2022 and was crushed anyway, that would be a bigger problem.

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