2025 was a season to forget for the Marlins righty Sandy Alcantara. The 2022 NL Cy Young award winner has looked to establish himself as one of the best hitters in the entire game over the past few years, but that reputation has faded over the past few years due to injuries and inactivity. Tommy John Alcantara surgery was performed in late 2023 and ended his 2024 season. While he returned in time for the 2025 season opener, he was not an active starter for most of the year. Overall, he entered 2026 with a 4.73 ERA (95 ERA+) and 4.15 FIP in 59 starts since receiving his aforementioned Cy Young. Those numbers are closer to a fifth starter than an ace and questions about what the righty can really offer the team right now helped keep him in Miami during last year’s trade deadline and this past winter.
Three starts into his 2026 campaign, Alcantara already seems to be changing the narrative. The righty has posted a career-best 0.74 ERA in 24 1/3 innings of work in his three outings this season. Those results are obviously very good, but the Alcantara brand’s ability to penetrate deep into games is also evident; he has averaged over eight innings in starts so far this year. Either a sub-1.00 ERA or his 240-inning pace will continue throughout the year, of course, but what can fans expect from the righty this year?
There are some signs that Alcantara’s hot start to the year may turn sour. The right-hander has limited opponents to an impossible-to-maintain .159 BABIP and sits more than a hundred points below his career mark. He also enjoyed a relatively easy early season schedule, facing low-seeds like the Rockies and White Sox while catching the Reds at a time when most of their players were struggling. Given that level of competition, it’s understandable to be cautious about the right one until he succeeds in dealing with challenging cases.
However, that does not mean that there is no reason for hope. The most obvious one is that Alcantara is now a full year removed from Tommy John rehab, and his last season where he didn’t deal with elbow issues or the aftermath of that surgery was his 2022 Cy Young campaign. That’s also supported by the fact that Alcantara improved significantly during the 2025 season. After carrying a horrendous 7.22 ERA into last year’s All-Star break, he posted a 3.33 ERA with a 3.89 FIP the rest of the way, including a 2.62 ERA and 24.9% strikeout rate over the final six weeks of the regular season. Looking at the second half of 2025 in conjunction with the start of the 2026 season, Alcantara looks like the ace he once was with a 2.75 ERA, 3.53 FIP, 48.6% groundball rate, and 15.5 K-BB% in 108 innings over 16 career starts.
Going back to his performance so far in 2026, Alcantara’s strikeout and walk rates are better than they have been since his Cy Young season and his groundball rate is on the decline after dropping to 46.5% last year. The most encouraging sign so far is the complete lack of hard contact that Alcantara has allowed. That was the righty’s biggest issue in 2023 and ’25, and while those numbers will take some time to stabilize, things look very encouraging so far in 2026. He has allowed one hit so far this year and his 28.6% strikeout rate is exceptional so far. It would be shocking to see those rates stay that low throughout the year, but if he can post a barrel rate in the five to six percent range and a strikeout rate below 40%, that would leave his profile looking much more like it did at his peak than in the years surrounding his surgery, when he averaged 7.8% barrels and a 42.6% average.
How do MLBTR readers think Alcantara’s 2026 season will shake out this year? Will he re-establish himself as one of the league’s best hitters? If not, will he at least return to being a clear above-average starter in terms of run prevention for the first time since 2022, or is this hot start just a flash in the pan? Have your say in the poll below:
