{"id":120647,"date":"2026-05-02T17:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=120647"},"modified":"2026-05-02T17:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:30:11","slug":"former-marlins-1-prospect-may-struggle-to-keep-rotation-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/05\/02\/former-marlins-1-prospect-may-struggle-to-keep-rotation-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Make-or-Break Time: This Former Marlins #1 Prospect Is at a Career Crossroads"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Marlins once featured four starting pitchers in their top-5 prospects in 2023. Fans were getting excited, hoping that the likes of <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/cabreed02.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Edward Cabrera<\/a>, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/meyerma01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Max Meyer<\/a>, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sanchsi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sixto Sanchez<\/a>, and <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/perezeu02.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eury Perez<\/a>, would complete a five-man rotation that already had all-star Sandy Alcantara. In the three years since, only two are still contracted to the Marlins. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/01\/06\/cubs-aquire-edward-cabrera-from-the-marlins\/\" target=\"_self\">Cabrera was traded over this past off-season to the Cubs<\/a>, and Sanchez is now a free-agent, his career filled with untimely injuries. This leaves Meyer and Perez, both still occupying spots in the Marlins rotation.<\/p>\n<p>While Meyer is pitching pretty impressive to start the season, the same cannot be said for Perez. With an ERA at 4.60 in six starts and 31 innings, it is beginning to look shaky for the former #1 prospect. His issue so far this season has been allowing stolen bases. Among all qualified starting pitchers, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/04\/bronx-burners-yankees-aggressive-identity-shift-is-paying-early-dividends\/\" target=\"_self\">Perez has given up the most stolen bases<\/a>, creating more avenues for teams to take advantage and score runs off of him.<\/p>\n<p>It is an issue he has had during his short career to this point, and is something that needs to be remedied immediately if he wants to see short and long-term success. Should he and Marlins pitching coach Daniel Moskos find the right adjustment, it will improve the rest of his game. If Perez is able to keep runners from stealing on him, fans could see him become a more polished starter.<\/p>\n<h2>Still a Lot of Time for the former Marlins Top Prospect to Improve<\/h2>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"a61405551f80e72f675225f083759bb9\" image-id=\"fwuQzyuPi9sx\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 5461px; aspect-ratio: 5461\/3640;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p>Perez is someone who Marlins fans have had great admiration and hope for, with a dominant career in many minor league levels. In his age 18 season, he collected 108 strikeouts and a 1.96 ERA in 78 innings at Single-A and High-A. This made Perez gradually climb up the prospect list for the Marlins, eventually landing as high as 13 on the MLB.com Top 100 Prospects. There is still plenty of time for Perez to figure out his game. He is still only 23 years old, throws hard, and has a great mentor in Sandy Alcantara. Perez recently asked Alcantara to be his sons godfather, and Sandy has always mentioned how much he cares for and respects his teammate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">3 straight Rockies pulverize pitches off of Eury P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunate to only give up 1 run. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YU58X4aOVz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/YU58X4aOVz<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Fish On First (@FishOnFirst) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FishOnFirst\/status\/2037991385760989190?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 28, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In an a recent post-game interview, Alcantara mentioned the importance of his relationship with Perez.<\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe respect and the confidence that he gave to me and has shown to me, it&#8217;s always a great opportunity for me to show him that I&#8217;m here for him, that I want him to be here for a long time, that I want him to learn new things and to get better,\u201d Alcantara said. \u201cEury, to me, is not my teammate; he&#8217;s like my brother.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Perez makes his next start on Friday, when the Marlins open up a series against a struggling Phillies team. There is still plenty of time for the 23-year-old to make adjustments and find consistency. A home start against a struggling team could be exactly what he needs. He could very well find some consistency in what is an exciting, but still inexperienced Marlins rotation.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><strong>(Top Image Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Marlins once featured four starting pitchers in their top-5 prospects in 2023. Fans were getting excited, hoping that the likes of Edward Cabrera, Max Meyer, Sixto Sanchez, and Eury Perez, would complete a five-man rotation that already had all-star Sandy Alcantara. In the three years since, only two are still contracted to the Marlins. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5831,"featured_media":121096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,20,1071],"tags":[28420,71],"class_list":["post-120647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-marlins","category-mlb","tag-eury-perez","tag-miami-marlins"],"modified_by":"Matthew Nethercott, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120647"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121098,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120647\/revisions\/121098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}