Ronny Henriquez is flourishing into one of the best relievers in MLB
Marlins RHP Ronny Henriquez has seemingly come out of nowhere to become one of the best relief pitchers in the sport.
Image courtesy of Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
Ronny Henriquez entered the 2025 season with a big opportunity to prove that he belongs in a big league bullpen. After the Twins DFA’d him this February to make room for Harrison Bader and Danny Coulombe, Peter Bendix took advantage of the golden opportunity to claim Henriquez off waivers.
To that point, recently turned 25-year-old Henriquez had a 2.90 ERA in 31 MLB innings with Minnesota. He began the year with no minor league options remaining, meaning that this would be his first chance to get consistent major league innings after bouncing around between Triple-A and the majors in the Twins organization.
Through the first few months of the season, Henriquez has been more than impressive. Across his first 43 innings (40 relief appearances), he’s posting a 2.72 ERA with a 94th percentile strikeout percentage of 32.6%. Furthermore, he’s one of just 12 qualified relievers to post a sub-3 ERA and K/9 north of 12.40, placing him in elite company alongside Aroldis Chapman, Edwin Diaz, Cade Smith, and others.
What makes Henriquez especially challenging to face is his ability to mix up his pitches, leaving opposing hitters completely clueless on what they’re going to see. He throws his sweeper 32 percent of the time, four-seam fastball 30 percent of the time, slider 20% of the time, and changeup 16% of the time. Outside of his changeup—which has only been thrown 11 times to righties as opposed to 102 times against lefties—Henriquez consistently uses his entire pitch mix to batters of either handedness.
His season has been so good that he’s starting to make marks in the history books. His two 8th-inning strikeouts against the Brewers on Saturday made him just the 3rd Marlins reliever to strike out 60 or more batters before the All-Star break, joining Tanner Scott (64, 2023) and Kyle Barraclough (60, 2016). @MarlinsComms on X also pointed out that his streak of 28 consecutive appearances with a strikeout is the longest such streak in club history.
The most impressive aspect of Henriquez’s breakout campaign is easily the way his strikeout rate has skyrocketed since joining the Marlins organization. His aforementioned 32.6% strikeout percentage sounds way more insane when you learn that it was just 18.3% last year. That’s right, Daniel Moskos and the Marlins pitching lab were able to turn Ronny Henriquez into one of the best strikeout pitchers in the sport by making one adjustment: adding a sweeper to his arsenal. The pitch has a whopping 46.2% whiff rate, ranking first in MLB among the 41 pitchers who’ve thrown at least 200 sweepers this season.
Graph courtesy of Baseball Savant
While it seems unlikely that Henriquez receives All-Star recognition this July due to his lack of save opportunities, it’s important that fans understand exactly how impressive of a season he’s having while only being 25.
Video courtesy of MLB.com