Rumor has it the Miami Marlins are shopping for veteran starting pitching again, and that alone should make fans wince a little.
This is a familiar lane for Miami. The club has gone down this road with Chris Paddack, Cal Quantrill, Johnny Cueto, Wei-Yin Chen and Dan Straily.
More often than not, the payoff has been thin. To find the clear wins, you have to rewind all the way to Javier Vazquez in 2011 and Mark Buerhle in 2012.
The issue hasn’t been the Marlins’ ability to find and develop young arms. That part has been a strength, from Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez on down.
It’s the veteran stopgaps that have been the problem, especially the back end of the rotation. Miami has too often gone bargain hunting for one of the most important spots on the roster, and the results have reflected that.
Some of those moves have been crushed by bad luck, but the bigger issue has been the lack of upside. Too many of the bets have been on pitchers who might eat innings and maybe post a sub-4.00 ERA.
The floor, as last year with Paddack showed, can be far uglier than that.
That’s why Kris Bubic stands out as the kind of swing Miami should actually take.
Pending a physical, the Marlins should move fast. Bubic has been one of the better pitchers in baseball as recently as 2026, and he was an All-Star in 2025.
He won’t turn 30 until August, and he’s been effective for four straight seasons whenever he’s been on the mound. The profile is clean: strikeouts, ground balls, and few walks.
This isn’t a case of hoping an older arm finds one last spark. He’s producing right now.
The obvious catch is health. That’s the part that keeps his name from sitting much higher on MLB Trade Rumors’ free-agent list.
But the upside is hard to ignore. If the arm holds together long enough for Robby Snelling and Thomas White to be ready, Miami could be getting an All-Star starter on a deal it can comfortably handle.
MLBTR projects him for a one-year contract, two at the most, at an annual salary slightly below what the Marlins just gave Pete Fairbanks. In practical terms, that’s a prove-it deal.
And it fits.
If Bubic hits, Miami gets something close to a borderline ace. He’s been that for two seasons, with a strong track record before that as a reliever. If he doesn’t, the Marlins still get to say they spent real money on a free agent, which matters for them from a PR angle, and they can frame it as an aggressive win-now move.
Either way, it’s a bet worth making.
In Other News...
Marlins Offseason Focus Just Shifted To One Lingering Lineup Problem
At the General Managers Meetings in Las Vegas, Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix spent plenty of time talking through the state of the roster, and the pitching side came across as a place of relative comfort. He said he feels good about the returning rotation pieces while leaving the door open to outside additions, a familiar offseason balancing act for a club still trying to sort out where the next upgrade might come from.
The more interesting wrinkle is on the offensive side, where Bendix pointed to the teams work against left-handed pitching as a lingering issue that has to be addressed from more than one angle. He framed it as a mix of personnel, approach and player development, which suggests the Marlins are not looking for one simple fix so much as a broader answer to a problem that has followed them into the winter. [Read more 🡒]
Marlins Face A Bullpen Question That Could Test Their Offseason Limits
The Marlins have spent years operating with one of baseballs tighter payrolls, so every bullpen decision tends to carry extra weight. Last offseasons bet on Peter Fairbanks was supposed to give the late innings some stability, but the move never delivered the kind of return Miami needed, leaving the club with another reminder of how thin the margin can be when it shops in the relief market.
Now the question is whether Miami is willing to stretch farther than usual to address the issue again. There has been speculation about the club pursuing a proven closer on the free-agent market, but for a team that has historically kept its spending in check, even being mentioned in that conversation says plenty about how urgent the need has become. [Read more 🡒]