The Miami Marlins found a true ace after Jose Fernandez had a tremendous 2013 season and in 2014 he looked like he was ready to follow it up before his season was ended with an elbow tear that led to Tommy John surgery. With Fernandez down the Marlins needed someone to step up and take over that role as the ace of the staff if they were going to compete and Henderson Alvarez has stepped up to the plate. He’s not as flashy, but he’s pitching better than, well, anyone right now.
Alvarez’ last three games have been things of beauty, three scoreless outings topped off with a complete game shutout in his most recent start where he only threw 88 pitches. It was his third complete game shutout on the year for this his third win of the year proving the statement “if you want something done right, do it yourself.”
Alvarez and Fernandez are two very different pitchers, though. Fernandez is eye popping with a fastball that sits at 95 miles per hour with a wicked slider that causes opposing batters to swing and miss while Alvarez has a fastball that sits about two miles per hour lower at 93 and is a groundball pitcher. Even though they are much different pitchers, they both get results at the top of the rotation for the Marlins, but Alvarez cannot be as good as Fernandez, can he? The answer is yes in my opinion, but in a much different way.
Alvarez is a guy the Marlins are going to be able to count on to get outs. He will get ground balls that will lead to double plays and keep opposing hitters in the ballpark. He has had a few starts where he has given up four earned runs or more and his first start of the season he gave up six runs, three earned, but because of the five games without allowing a run his ERA sits at 2.62 good for 16th overall.
What makes me believe that Alvarez can be as good as Fernandez for the Marlins, though, is his pinpoint accuracy and groundball rate. Through 75.2 innings this season he has walked only 16 batters for an average of only 1.9 walks per nine innings and has five games where he issued zero free passes. Alvarez is going to give up hits, but because his groundball rate is around 55 percent he is not going to give up many extra base hits and will get more double play balls behind him like the three he got in his most recent outing.
He will never be the kind of pitcher that Fernandez is, but if Alvarez can keep pitching like he has recently there is no reason to believe he cannot turn into an upper echelon ground ball pitcher like Tim Hudson who is in the middle of his sixteenth season in the major leagues. He may not be an all-star this year because of all of the great starting pitchers in the National League, and like Hudson he may not make it a lot, but he will eventually make it and he will deserve it.