Detroit Tigers: Miami Marlins trade ideas

Bolstering the pitching staff

Right off the bat, Miami is in a rough situation with most of the team’s hefty contracts.

Starting pitchers Wei-Yen Chen and Edinson Volquez are both far from locks to pitch in 2018 due to injury.

Because of that, the team may obviously find it hard to move the duo.

There’s also Stanton’s monstrosity of a contract that, per Spotrac, comes with a full no-trade clause and could run through 2028 if all of the options are exercised.

Additionally, Miami doesn’t have the deepest farm system known to mankind.

This would conceivably make it difficult to package a high-end prospect with a bloated contract in order to get the salary off the books.

Still, the team does have some conceivable trade chips that could be useful to the Detroit Tigers.

Brad Ziegler

The most prominent among them are relievers Brad Ziegler and Junichi Tazawa.

Both were signed from Boston last offseason and things didn’t exactly go swimmingly for the ex-Red Sox.

Ziegler had the worst, and arguably first, down season of his career in 2017.

The fact that the reliever is just now turning in a struggling season says a lot about his successful career. However that doesn’t take away from the ineffectiveness.

A side-arm hurler, Ziegler struck out just 4.98 batters per nine innings while surrendering 3.06 free passes per nine frames.

He also had a career-high 1.55 WHIP and a career-low 12.3 strikeout percentage in 47 innings.

Still, some of the issues with base runners can be somewhat attributed to a sky-high .346 BABIP.

Ziegler will enter 2018 on an expiring contract, according to Spotrac, making $9 million.

Fellow reliever Tazawa will also be pitching on an expiring deal, with his salary (according to Spotrac), checking in at $7 million.

While Ziegler’s struggles were in part due to the BABIP, Tazawa was a different story entirely.

The pitcher turned in a 5.69 ERA, a 5.30 xFIP, a 4.96 FIP and a 4.94 SIERA in 55.1 frames despite a seemingly-low BABIP of .280.