This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola’s Marlins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Cameras caught Marlins left-hander Jesús Luzardo pleading for one more inning inside the dugout on Tuesday night at loanDepot park. It's understandable, considering he was at 86 pitches through seven relatively stress-free frames in an eventual 6-1 victory over the Royals.

Luzardo isn't alone in begging manager Skip Schumaker and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. to go deeper into a start. Sandy Alcantara has had a reputation of doing so, especially during last year's National League Cy Young Award-winning campaign. Top prospect and protégé Eury Pérez recently did the same. It's a good "problem" to have if you're the Marlins because that means the pitchers are being effective enough to warrant such debate.

"[Jesús is] going to be on pace for definitely a career high [in innings]," Schumaker said. "You want to monitor it and throw the extra inning when it's needed. We felt like we had really good matchups at the end of the bullpen to give guys an inning, and we were fresh, so getting Zeus seven innings [with] two hits, he did his job. Plenty. We were up five at the time, so he did plenty to give us a chance to win. He wanted it. He looked at me like, 'I want another one.' He did plenty for us to win. It was maybe the best start of his season."

Outside of Alcantara, Miami's starters don't have a lot of innings on their resume. Here's a look at their single-season career highs:

• Luzardo -- 112 in 2022
• Edward Cabrera -- 110 1/3 in 2022
• Braxton Garrett -- 125 in 2022
• Pérez -- 78 in 2021

Barring a setback, Trevor Rogers will soon return from a left biceps strain. Of late, the entire rotation has been solid. Might the Marlins decide to go with a six-man rotation after discussing the possibility during Spring Training? Perhaps the club alternates skipping guys' starts. While it's less than ideal for Alcantara to pitch every six days rather than five -- even with his struggles -- doing so would allow the younger starters to approach their career highs at a slower rate. Looking even further into the future, should Miami remain in contention, its chances wouldn't bode well with pitchers being shut down.

At some point, the Marlins hope to get back Johnny Cueto to eat up innings. While rehabbing from right biceps tightness, he sprained his left ankle. The 37-year-old veteran threw live batting practice on Tuesday as he works his way back. Just something to think about the next time you wonder why a starting pitcher is pulled earlier than you'd hoped.