USA Today Article

Marlins pitchers kick it up

By Gary Graves, USA TODAY

Good thing the Florida Marlins didn't take it personally when they were excluded from preseason discussions about baseball's best pitching staffs, because the defending World Series champions don't want anybody thinking their strong start is some sort of vendetta.

Josh Beckett has one of the nine victories by Marlins starters, helping Florida to first place in the NL East.

By John Bazemore, AP

Instead the World Series champions would rather worry about each other in what has become a ferocious game of one-upmanship among the starting pitchers. If left-hander Dontrelle Willis strikes out six batters one night, then righty Josh Beckett is compelled to fan seven the next, and so on with Brad Penny and Carl Pavano.

This competition has produced a 3.14 ERA for the rotation and a two-game lead in the National League East entering Monday night. As for the rotations that got more love than the Marlins, only the Chicago Cubs (3.07) have lived up to the hype, while the Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros and New York Yankees are following behind.

"The way we look at it, the pressure's on all those other teams," says Beckett, who has followed up his World Series-clinching shutout of the Yankees with a 1-2 start, both losses coming against Atlanta. "We've got the World Series rings."

The leader has been Willis, who is 17-6 in the majors since being called up last spring. The reigning National League Rookie of the Year started 3-0 and went 192/3 innings without allowing an earned run before Atlanta's Mark DeRosa homered off him in the first inning Sunday night, the first of two earned runs in six innings.

Florida's nine starter wins entering Monday tied for second with Houston and Boston and one behind the Cubs. They're also chasing the Cubs' record for strikeouts per nine innings of 8.68 set last season. Even new acquisitions such as veteran closer Armando Benitez (0.73 ERA, 9-for-9 in save chances) have gotten in on the act.

But from the Marlins' view, none of this should be a surprise. Granted they are young ? the average age of the starters is 26 ? but they have last year's experience to add to their immense talent.

"We learned a lot last year, obviously," says Pavano, who is 1-0 with a 3.79 ERA. "Our standards are very high. We don't need attention to make us work harder ... and we're not here to prove reporters or prognosticators wrong. We're here to prove ourselves right."

Coach keeps pitchers loose

Helping them is pitching coach Wayne Rosenthal, a laid-back type who comes across more as a big brother than an authority figure.

He jokes that his role has been keeping his charges loose and confident and says that he hasn't seen anything worth getting concerned about.

Even if there were something, Rosenthal says he tries to aid their physical development with subtle suggestions rather than changing it. In Willis' case, it was a matter of making the jerkiness of his high-kick delivery more fluid with exercises such as long tossing in the outfield and throwing on flat ground between starts, as well as improving his drive toward the plate.

Willis and his peers helped themselves by arriving at spring training in shape, a sign of maturity, despite Rosenthal not saying a word about offseason conditioning.

"These guys got the soreness out quick and took off to the point where they were throwing on four days' rest in spring training with no problems," Rosenthal says. "That was the start of it. I'll say it again: They're just going out and having fun, and they're thriving off each other. If one throws a shutout, the next one figures he'll throw a shutout."

Another factor was having the spring to learn what manager Jack McKeon wanted instead of playing it by ear as they did after the 73-year-old was brought in last May.

While the careers of Willis and Beckett (3.91 ERA) have taken off, McKeon thinks bigger things are ahead for Pavano. He also foresees a bigger profile for Penny (2-1, 2.36 ERA), who matched Ryan Dempster's franchise record for wins (42) by beating Atlanta on Saturday. And don't forget A.J. Burnett, who might have the best stuff of them all and hopes to complete his comeback from elbow ligament surgery in mid-June.

In other words, you haven't seen the best of the Marlins yet.

"Am I surprised? Not really," McKeon says. "There's a lot of potential, and the biggest upside is the experience they got last fall. They learned what to do to become one of the better staffs and they knew the price they had to pay. So far, so good.

"In two or three years I can see people saying the same thing about our rotation. These guys are maturing, and three of the five potentially could be 20-game winners. The fun part is seeing them get better and better. Maybe all of them will rise at the same time."

Florida runs away from the competition in ERA

Where the Florida Marlins pitching staff ranks in ERA among the presumed top staffs entering this season:

Team W-L ERA IP H BB SO

1. Florida Marlins 12-6 2.86 163 2/3 137 52 140

2. Boston Red Sox 12-6 3.36 171 1/3 147 79 135

4. Philadelphia Phillies 7-10 3.54 150 150 41 110

5. Oakland Athletics 10-9 3.63 173 2/3 180 46 113

6. Chicago Cubs 12-6 3.74 166 140 79 163

16. N.Y. Yankees 8-11 4.50 168 176 62 114

*Through Sunday