Big-time potential for one under-the-radar trade candidate

Controllable starting pitching is perhaps the most valuable asset in baseball today, not to mention a coveted commodity on the trade market.

For obvious reasons, though, there just aren’t many controllable arms available via trade this offseason besides White Sox ace Dylan Cease, who has two seasons to go before he’s eligible for free agency and is likely to be dealt once some of the top free-agent pitchers are off the board.

The Mariners need bats and have multiple controllable arms to dangle in trades, including Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo. However, The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal (subscription required) recently wrote that Seattle is “increasingly doubtful” to trade Miller or Woo due to concerns about its finances and rotation depth behind its top five.

Marlins left-hander Jesús Luzardo is reportedly drawing interest, but it’s hard to see Miami moving him. Luzardo is just 26 years old, has three years of control remaining and has become the club’s ace following the loss of Sandy Alcantara to Tommy John surgery.

The Marlins do need offensive help, however, and they might be more amenable to moving one of their other young arms to obtain it.

Edward Cabrera's name has also surfaced in the rumor mill. The 25-year-old righty is more of an unknown than Cease or Luzardo and is a riskier target than Miller or Woo, but he offers significant upside for an opportunistic club that is willing to bet they can iron out his flaws. Here’s a breakdown of this intriguing trade candidate.

Who is Cabrera?

Cabrera signed with the Marlins as an amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 2015. He was ranked among MLB Pipeline’s preseason Top 100 prospects every year from 2020-22, peaking at No. 34.

Cabrera has appeared in parts of three seasons for the Marlins, but the results have been mixed. Over 197 2/3 innings, the 25-year-old has posted a 4.01 ERA, a 4.78 FIP and a 1.34 WHIP.

Why he’s risky

Here’s a snapshot of Cabrera’s 2023 performance, viewed through a Statcast lens.

For those unfamiliar with Baseball Savant’s performance sliders, red circles are good and blue circles are bad. And when it comes to Cabrera, there’s one blue circle in particular that stands out -- his first percentile rank in walk rate (or BB%).

Cabrera faced 434 batters in 2023 and walked 66 of them, for a walk rate of 15.2%. To put that in perspective, the MLB average walk rate this past season was 8.6%.

Among pitchers who threw at least 1,500 pitches in 2023, only one found the strike zone less frequently than Cabrera (41.5% zone rate). Granted, the one pitcher was Blake Snell, the National League Cy Young Award winner. But Snell is a unique talent with three elite secondary pitches. He’s not someone who can easily be emulated.

It remains to be seen if Cabrera will ever throw enough strikes to be an effective Major League starter. He’s now nearly 200 innings into his career and has a 14% walk rate and a 42.1% zone rate.

Durability is another concern. Cabrera hasn't yet shown the ability to make it through a full MLB season unscathed. He missed nearly two months in 2022 with right elbow tendinitis and another month this past season with a right shoulder impingement.

Why he's worth the risk

Teams may be scared off by Cabrera's control problems, but there are a number of reasons why he's someone worth targeting in a trade. For starters, he's only 25 years old and under team control for five more years, giving him plenty of time to develop before he's eligible for free agency.

Here are three more reasons he's such an intriguing trade option.

1. He averages nearly 93 mph -- with his changeup

Remember what we said about Snell being difficult to emulate? Cabrera is pretty unique in his own right.

While pitchers who can get their fastball into the upper 90s are fairly common in today’s game, the list of hurlers who sit in the low 90s with their changeup isn’t long. In fact, Cabrera’s career average changeup velocity of 92.7 mph is the fastest in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008). All but three others (min. 400 changeups thrown) have posted average figures below 90 mph.

There have been only 10 K’s on changeups thrown 95 mph or faster in the entire pitch-tracking era. Cabrera is responsible for nine of them, including the record of 95.6 mph against the Brewers’ Christian Yelich in September.

Opponents have hit just .180 with a .288 slugging percentage over 274 plate appearances against Cabrera’s changeup since 2022.

You can imagine why the pitch can be so difficult for batters to handle. His changeup is only separated by about 3 mph from his four-seamer and sinker, and all three pitches have nearly identical spin direction out of his hand, so they look like the same pitch at first from the hitter's vantage point. However, his changeup drops more and gets more arm-side run on its way to the plate than either of his fastballs.

There's an especially big difference in movement between his four-seamer and changeup, with the latter getting 10.4 inches more vertical drop and 7.5 inches more horizontal break in 2023. He threw those two pitches a combined 59% of the time this past season.

2. He's tough to hit, and the numbers show it

Cabrera may not know where the ball is going all the time, but one thing is certain: his arsenal -- which features a curveball and slider in addition to his four-seamer, sinker and changeup -- does not make it easy for hitters to put the ball in play or produce loud contact.

Cabrera missed bats at a high level in 2023, ranking in the 83rd percentile in whiff rate (30.9%) and the 77th percentile in strikeout rate (27.2%).

When batters made contact, it was often weak -- his 35.4% hard-hit rate ranked in the 75th percentile, while his ground-ball rate (55.7%) ranked in the 91st percentile.

Add it all up and Cabrera yielded just a .199 expected batting average and a .330 expected SLG, both of which are based on quality of contact (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) and strikeouts. Those figures ranked in the 93rd and 89th percentiles, respectively.

Cabrera also had a solid 3.77 expected ERA, a Statcast metric that takes walks into account -- unlike xBA and xSLG -- in addition to contact quality and K's. That was actually a better mark than either Cease (4.13) or Luzardo (3.96) managed in 2023.

There's certainly a chance some of those figures will regress if Cabrera starts to throw more pitches in the strike zone, but they are encouraging nonetheless.

3. There's precedent for talented but wild pitchers turning things around

Every pitcher is different, but teams interested in acquiring Cabrera can at least point to some examples of promising pitchers with control problems eventually finding their footing in the Majors.

Hall of Famer Randy Johnson presents one of the most famous examples. The Big Unit had a 14.5% walk rate over his first five seasons, but he trimmed that number considerably over the rest of his career and went on to become one of the best pitchers in the history of the game.

More recently, Tyler Glasnow went from having a 13.9% walk rate over 141 1/3 innings in a Pirates uniform to posting a 7.8% walk rate following a trade to the Rays. Astros ace Framber Valdez was also wild in his first two seasons (14.1% walk rate over 107 2/3 innings) before harnessing his stuff.

These are obviously best-case scenarios for Cabrera, but they do show that it's possible for a talented young arm to overcome shaky control.

Of course, you can also make the case that the Marlins should hold onto Cabrera for all of the reasons mentioned above. But if they do end up trading him as they try to improve their offense, he has the potential to be one of the steals of the offseason.