Why the Marlins Should Move Edward Cabrera to the Bullpen

Edward Cabrera led MLB in BB% last season, allowing a free pass to 15% of hitters he faced in 2023. Here's why I think he could succeed as a reliever.

If you sit down and rewatch an archived MLB TV broadcast of an Edward Cabrera start, it won’t take you long to realize that he has excellent stuff. With an average fastball of 96 mph and an average changeup of 93 mph, Cabrera’s two primary pitches are very hard to hit. If you take a quick look at Edward Carbera’s Baseball Savant, you’ll see that almost every stat is in red, besides his first percentile walk rate.

Based on the information shown on his percentile rankings, I think the Marlins should experiment Edward Cabrera as a reliever during the 2024 regular season. Cabrera had several starts throughout the season where he had a few solid innings but got pulled from the game in the fourth, fifth, or sixth inning with runners on base because he ran into walk issues. If Cabrera turns into a reliever, you would only have to rely on him to have command for one inning.

It’s more than possible for pitchers to have drastic improvements in their walk percentage. For example, Randy Johnson had a 6.2 BB9 in 1992, then cut it down into the 2’s and 3’s for the rest of his career and became one of the best pitchers ever. To use a Marlins reliever as an example, Tanner Scott cut his walk percentage in half (15.9 to 7.8) from 2022 to 2023, leading to him becoming one of the best relievers in baseball. So yeah, it’s more than possible to drastically cut down your walk rate and instantly become elite.

With all that being said, it’s unclear if Edward Cabrera will even be a Marlin in 2024. Although there have been no official rumors, Cabrera is a trade candidate and likely has some front offices around the league evaluating him right this second. After all, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Marlins traded Edward Cabrera with all the value that comes with a young, controllable arm with filthy stuff.

It’s also good to remember that the Marlins are somewhat thin on starting pitchers, with Sandy Alcantara sidelined for the entirety of 2024 due to TJ surgery. Max Meyer and Trevor Rogers coming back from injuries helps, but the Marlins are very low on depth. Here’s what the Marlins projected rotation looks like:
SP1: Luzardo
SP2: Garrett
SP3: Perez
SP4: Cabrera

SP5: Rogers
SP6: Meyer