What We Tell You Three Times Is True: Jose Urena

We go way back with Jose Urena. We drafted him in January 2015 for the very first team we co-owned. Undaunted by his disappointing performance as a reliever at the start of that season, we rhapsodized about him in May 2015, just before the Marlins re-promoted him and plugged him into their rotation. Further undaunted by his disappointing performance in that role, we effused about him just this past March. And now, still undaunted by his disappointing performance as a reliever in the majors earlier this season, we again wax enthusiastic as he rejoins the Marlins’ starting rotation.

The book on Urena has been well-thumbed, but just in case you haven’t been to the library: 24-year-old Dominican, torrid fastball in both its two-seam and its four-seam variants, indifferent secondary arsenal, good control but misses too few bats for a guy who throws that hard and doesn’t do so great when he throws softer. He’s pitched well, if not always overwhelmingly so, in the minors, but hasn’t (until now—see below) approached seven strikeouts per nine innings since rookie ball in 2010. When he got demoted to triple-A the end of May this season, his career MLB record stood at 2 Wins, 6 Losses, a 5.82 ERA, and 4.39 K/9.

But strange things happen in New Orleans, as Dr. John the Night Tripper could tell you, and so it proved with Urena after he was sent there. In 28 1/3 innings, he struck out 23 batters—a rate of 7.31 per 9. It’s not Aroldis Chapman, but it’s way more than he’d managed before.

True, Urena’s other New Orleans numbers weren’t dazzling. All right, they weren’t even especially good: 3.17 ERA, but 1.45 WHIP, featuring a lot more walks than he’d ever allowed before. But when Marlins’ starter Wei-Yin Chen went down with an elbow sprain last week, Urena got the call. He’s made two starts since, and though he hasn’t won either, they’ve both been very good: in the aggregate, 11 2/3 IP, 8 Hits, 1 Walk, 2 ER, and—most importantly for purposes of the present discussion—9 strikeouts.

We suspect this isn’t a blip—that it betokens something new. We aren’t experts with pitch data and heat maps, but it’s plain that Urena is throwing his two-seamer more, and it appears to us that he’s throwing it harder and spotting it better, so that hitters either swing at it and miss, take it, usually for a strike, or hit it softly on the ground. And if it is something new, it’s something good.

We counsel caution rather than the reckless abandon we usually favor. Urena’s big games came against the Mets and the Phillies, whom no one is confusing with the Big Red Machine (though even so, neither team is especially strikeout-prone). His next start is this weekend against the Cardinals, whose hitting against right-handed pitching is probably the NL’s best. And, of course, it’s only two games that we’re basing our view on. But everyone’s been saying “if only” about Urena for years—if only he could do this, that, or the other thing, he’d be a top-of-the-rotation starter (or lights-out closer, or whatever). So maybe it’s actually happened. Worth a shot, we think, assuming he’s available in your league—which, since he’s owned in fewer than 2% of Yahoo and ESPN leagues, he should be.