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Jordan Zimmermann busted through the 2015 free-agent logjam Sunday when he inked a five-year pact with the Detroit Tigers. Now, the offseason’s deep pool of pitchers can (and will) flow in his wake.

But there are two ostensibly available arms who should tread water. Or, more accurately, their teams should.

We’re talking about the New York Mets‘ Matt Harvey and the Miami Marlins‘ Jose Fernandez. Neither is due to rock the open market until 2019, but both have been the subject of trade rumors that understandably put the baseball world on high alert.

They’re two of the top young right-handers in the game, after all, bursting with velocity and pure, nasty stuff. And with Fernandez just 23 years old and Harvey 26, both may get better—a wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat thought for opposing hitters.

Yet the Mets could choose to move Harvey from a crowded rotation that features fellow burgeoning studs Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, with Zack Wheeler set to return at some point next season from Tommy John surgery.

New York needs a bat, at least, with free agents Yoenis Cespedes and Daniel Murphy possibly about to walk, and Harvey could likely fetch one from a club with holes in its rotation.

As for Fernandez, his name began churning through the rumor mill in earnest on Nov. 17 when SiriusXM host Craig Mish reported there’s “growing sentiment” the 2013 National League Rookie of the Year will be dealt this offseason.

The rumor came with whispers about a growing rift between Fernandez and the Marlins brass, which CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry outlined:

With regard to Fernandez, he’s reportedly already rebuffed one attempt to sign him to a long-term extension, and there’s been hints of tension between Fernandez and the Marlins over a post-Tommy John workload plan. It doesn’t help matters that Fernandez is represented by Scott Boras, and the Marlins’ high command doesn’t much care for the super-agent.

So perhaps the fear that Fernandez isn’t open to signing an extension coupled with some personal animus for his agent has prompted the Marlins to shop their franchise hurler.

“I have heard something,” Fernandez said of the trade scuttlebutt, per MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro. “I’m not paying attention to it at all.”

Perhaps not. But everyone else is, as they are with Harvey. If either player were to be moved, it’d immediately shift the balance of power somewhere.

Again, though, both the Mets and Marlins would be wise to hang on to their rising-star assets, at least for one more year.

The argument is simple, and it centers on supply and demand. Even with Zimmermann off the board, clubs in search of pitching have a buffet of appetizing options.

There’s David Price and Zack Greinke, the Cy Young Award runners-up in each league. After that, you’ve got strong No. 2 and No. 3 candidates like Johnny Cueto, Scott Kazmir, Mike Leake and Wei-Yin Chen plus high-upside reclamation projects like Jeff Samardzija.

Next year’s pitching class, by contrast, is a veritable wasteland after right-hander Stephen Strasburg (himself a subject of persistent trade speculation). Here, compare the lists of MLB’s 2015-16 free agents to the projected 2016-17 crop, per MLB Trade Rumors. Pretty striking disparity, right?

By holding back and making Harvey and Fernandez available next winter, the Mets and Marlins would be able to demand absolutely insane packages of top prospects and big league talent and would almost certainly get it from someone.

The Mets could shore up their offense, and Miami could get, well, whatever it’s looking for at the time. You just never know with the perpetually rebuilding/retooling/floundering Fish.

Of course, there is an inherent risk. Injuries can strike at any time, diminishing value. In fact, they already have struck: Harvey underwent Tommy John surgery in October 2013, and Fernandez had the procedure in May 2014.

In a way, though, that’s another argument for pumping the brakes on any trade. Fernandez started just 11 games last year, his first season back from TJ. And while he teased with 79 strikeouts and a 2.92 ERA in 64.2 innings, a full campaign of ace-like dominance would assuage any concerns about his durability.

Speaking of which, Harvey just weathered a controversy about his supposedly doctor-imposed innings limit to toss more than 200 frames between the regular season and playoffs for the NL champion Mets. If he can do it again—and replicate or improve upon his 2.71 ERA and 8.9 strikeouts per nine innings—he’ll officially have put the Tommy John talk to bed.

Surely, there are many in Mets and Marlins land who don’t want their teams to trade Harvey and Fernandez now or later. These are guys you can build a franchise around, and they’re a joy to watch every fifth day.

But even if you support flipping these young aces, patience is the operative word. There will come a time when a Harvey and/or Fernandez deal makes sense. That time isn’t now.

All statistics and contract information current as of Nov. 30 and courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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Hey, you there. Unnamed general manager. Word is you’re interested in a blockbuster trade for Jose Fernandez.

Well, good luck convincing the Miami Marlins to do it. But if you can…well, let’s just say you have the right idea.

But first, some background. The Fernandez trade smoke started circulating when Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported that the young ace had rejected a long-term contract offer, and when the Marlins made it known that Scott Boras, Fernandez’s agent, would no longer be included in discussions about the 23-year-old’s workload.

Then came the fire: a report from SiriusXM host Craig Mish stating there’s “growing sentiment” that Fernandez could be dealt this winter. Fanning the flames was a report from Andy Slater of SlaterScoops.com that effectively painted Fernandez as Miami’s problem child.

Things have since calmed. Marlins president David Samson downplayed the Fernandez rumors in a text to Jackson, and MLB.com’s Joe Frisaro and Jon Heyman of CBS Sports (via Frisaro) have both heard that Fernandez isn’t on the block.

Still, it’s difficult to disregard the idea. The Marlins have a reputation for dealing star talent—especially when said star talent is about to get expensive, as Fernandez is about to in his first tango with arbitration this winter. He’s poised to go from making $650,000 to being a multimillionaire.

Oh, and there’s the possibility of the Marlins landing an unprecedented haul for Fernandez.

If the Marlins do put the young right-hander on the block, the trade market will be getting a true rarity. He’s a 23-year-old with an ace track record and three years of club control left. It’s not often that pitchers with such things are traded, you know.

Within recent memory, the only trades that provide insight into what the Marlins can demand are the ones that changed the addresses of Erik Bedard, Matt Garza, Mat Latos and Gio Gonzalez. Each was in a position similar to the one Fernandez is in now, and each brought back at least four pieces of young talent.

But if it’s these trades the Marlins were to point to, they wouldn’t be saying “We want that.” They’d be saying “We want a lot more than that.”

Fernandez is not only younger now than any of those pitchers were but is also considerably better. Among pitchers who have logged at least 250 innings since 2013, he ranks among the elites not just in ERA but in three stats (FIP, xFIP and SIERA) that are designed to see through the imperfections of ERA:

On either side of Fernandez’s Tommy John operation in 2014, he’s been at least a top-10 starter. More realistically, he’s been a top-five starter.

And even saying that much isn’t doing him proper justice. If we use ERA+ to adjust Fernandez’s 2.40 career ERA for league average, we find that he’s been better in his age-20 to age-22 seasons than any pitcher in 100 years. That’s a one followed by two zeroes. So, yeah.

As such, Fernandez would be worth a lot more in a trade than Bedard, Garza, Latos and Gonzalez were. Maybe it wouldn’t take more than four pieces of young talent to acquire him, but the quality of the talent would have to be better.

Case in point: David Schoenfield of ESPN.com brought up names like Yoan Moncada, Julio Urias and Jose Berrios—three of MLB.com’s top 20 prospects—as mere starting points. In all likelihood, landing Fernandez would require at least one elite prospect and additional well-regarded pieces of young talent.

This is to say that any team that trades for Fernandez will basically be pulling off a Herschel Walker swap. Gone will be a whole bunch of young talent, and in its place will be just one player.

As for whether Fernandez could be worth such a deal, let’s keep it simple. Since any team that deals for him would only care about winning in the short term, let’s assume that his new club would be happy if he helped it do so by being his best, healthiest self. 

And you know what? That’s a very real possibility.

Fernandez is pretty much the platonic ideal of a power pitcher. Beyond being an athletic 6’2″ and 215 pounds, he strikes out a ton of batters with mid- to high-90s heat, a wicked curveball and an underrated changeup, and his walk rate in the last two seasons shows how he’s improved as a control artist.

There will come a time when age will be a threat to chip away at these abilities. But with Fernandez, that’s not an imminent threat.

According to the starting pitcher aging curves presented by Bill Petti at FanGraphs, starters don’t tend to begin leaking velocity at a rapid rate until around 26 years of age. Fernandez’s remaining three seasons of club control will only take him to his age-25 campaign, so scratch that as a reason to worry.

Elsewhere, history shows that starters typically don’t have to worry about their strikeout and walk rates going into sharp decline phases until they get closer to 30. You can scratch those as well.

The elephant in the room, of course, is Fernandez’s health. He’s already missed a year due to Tommy John surgery and had to hit the disabled list with a biceps strain after he returned in 2015. It’s not unfair to wonder whether he’s inherently prone to injuries.

And yet, it’s surprisingly easy to be optimistic.

It’s a good look that Fernandez’s stuff was A-OK in 11 starts in 2015. As Brooks Baseball shows below, his velocity was a combination of par for the course and more consistent. Elsewhere, his fastball, curveball and changeup were as good or better at missing bats than they were in 2013.

Fernandez’s command was also on point. He walked a career-low 1.95 batters per nine innings in 2015. Also, PITCHf/x tells us he threw a career-high 58.9 percent of his fastballs in the strike zone.

A related story is that he had no trouble with his mechanics. Doug Thorburn of Baseball Prospectus noted that Fernandez’s balance, momentum, torque and posture were as good as ever. Just as important, he also got his arm slot back up again after it dropped in 2014.

That was by design, specifically where his curveball was concerned. As he told Christina De Nicola of Fox Sports, keeping his arm up and staying on top of his curveball was “very important” because “obviously [it puts] a lot of pressure to my elbow, and that’s the main reason I got hurt in my opinion.”

Granted, all this doesn’t mean there’s no concern whatsoever. Fernandez has already gone under the knife, and noted surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache told Jonah Keri of Grantland (RIP, Grantland) in July that for every one mile per hour a pitcher throws, “there’s an exponentially higher force applied to the [surgical] graft.” Knowing how hard Fernandez throws, that’s a worry that applies to him.

Even still, this is only a dissenting observation. A pitcher who undergoes one Tommy John surgery is hardly doomed to undergo another. And if anyone can avoid another, it’s a pitcher like Fernandez, who is young, strong and athletic with good mechanics.

Another thing to be mindful of is that, though he may be about to get expensive for the Marlins, Fernandez wouldn’t be expensive for anyone else. Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors only projects him to make $2.2 million in arbitration. He’ll surely make a lot more in his second and third years of arbitration eligibility, but on the whole he’s destined to be drastically underpaid in the next three seasons.

This leaves just one question: Would Fernandez be too much of a pain in the butt in the clubhouse to be worth it?

If you believe Slater’s report, possibly. One player source claimed Fernandez spoke to management like they were children in 2015 and had his own teammates rooting against him. 

So, there’s that. But while it can’t be ignored, it sounds like it can be taken with a grain of salt.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports has a report out that begs to differ with Slater’s. His sources told him that Fernandez was actually more receptive to veteran criticism in 2015, and that he “for the most part endeared himself to teammates, showing greater maturity.” Besides which, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney was right to argue that Miami’s leadership issues in 2015 were hardly conducive to upstanding behavior.

So, let’s recap. Talent-wise, dealing for Fernandez is the next-best thing to dealing for Clayton Kershaw. Health-wise, he has what he needs to avoid further catastrophic injuries. Attitude-wise, it’s not a given that he’d be a clubhouse problem.

In light of all this, Fernandez is exactly the kind of player teams in win-now mode should want to deal for. The cost would be high, but there’s a strong chance of clubs getting exactly what they expect in return: an elite starting pitcher who could definitely help with the whole “win now” thing.

Teams should be interested, all right. Now all they have to do is convince the Marlins to do it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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From Zack Greinke to Aroldis Chapman, both the MLB free-agent market and the trade block are stocked with impact arms.

For now, no one knows just where exactly those stars will end up. However, after considering team needs for 2016 and taking into account all the latest buzz, here are some surprise destinations that make sense as potential landing spots.

The list that follows includes the top five free agents from Bleacher Report’s big board and the two most-prominent names on the trade front. Pitchers dominate the list, but there’s also room for a few big hitters who should make a big difference for their new employers in 2016.

Begin Slideshow

Jose Fernandez has proven to be one of the best young pitchers in baseball, but the Miami Marlins may entertain trade offers for him this offseason.  

Continue for updates.

Marlins Reportedly Will Deal Fernandez This Offseason

Tuesday, Nov. 17

According to Craig Mish of SiriusXM, there is a “growing sentiment around baseball and internally with the Marlins” that the team will trade Fernandez. 

However, Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reported Fernandez is “not being shopped or discussed to be shopped.”

Chris Towers of CBSSports.com noted, “Trying to justify trading Jose Fernandez from a baseball perspective is just silly.”

Fernandez is only 23 and has gone 22-9 with a 2.40 ERA, a 1.01 WHIP and 336 strikeouts in 289.0 innings pitched over three seasons. He is under club control until 2018 (he’s arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason), and his best seasons appear to be ahead of him, so trading him seems illogical.

On the other hand, injuries have become a bit of a concern, as he’s already had Tommy John surgery and missed a month of this season, after returning from that surgery, due to a right biceps strain. But the bigger issue is Miami’s current feud with Fernandez’s agent, Scott Boras, which escalated last week.

“[Boras] will not be involved in any discussion as it relates to Jose Fernandez,” team president David Samson said when discussing Fernandez’s workload for next season, per the Associated Press and ESPN.com. “We will be in touch with the doctors and Jose as we formulate a plan.”

If the Marlins don’t sign Fernandez to a long-term contract extension or ultimately trade him, it seems likely the feud with Boras will be the cause. The Marlins may have a history of making sweeping changes for cost-cutting purposes, but trading a 23-year-old future ace would be surprising, unless other factors—like the presence of Boras—play a major part.

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Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez reportedly turned down a long-term deal with the team Monday, according to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald.

Continue for updates.

Fernandez Rejects Long-Term Deal with Marlins

Contract specifics to the contract Fernandez turned down were not disclosed. 

The 23-year-old righty is arbitration-eligible, and 2016 will be his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. He went 6-1 with a 2.92 ERA in 11 starts in 2015, never exceeding seven innings and only once throwing more than 100 pitches in an outing.    

Jackson reported (via Rotoworld) that because of the righty’s high potential, he’s in no rush to ink a long-term deal:

That news comes as no surprise. Fernandez is a Scott Boras client and Boras clients rarely accept pre-arbitration extensions. Plus, the 23-year-old right-hander is coming off a season in which he made just 11 starts (due in large part to his 2014 Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery). He wasn’t going to sign a big deal with his value so low. Look for Fernandez to return to full-on ace status in 2016.

Marlins president David Samson indicated, per Jackson, that the team won’t pursue high-price free agents this offseason, such as David Price. 

The Marlins had the third-lowest payroll in 2015 at $62.34 million, per Spotrac, despite signing superstar Giancarlo Stanton to a 13-year, $325 million deal last November.

Fernandez remains a key cog to their plans of contending in what’s been a weak National League East, the New York Mets notwithstanding. But they’ll need quality starters to keep pace with the pennant champions in the coming years, as the Mets have a trio of high-velocity aces in Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom that’s going nowhere.

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Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez, who has made just seven starts in 2015, is dealing with a right bicep strain that is expected to force him to the disabled list. 

Continue for updates.

‘No Timetable’ for Fernandez’s Return After Right Bicep Strain

Sunday, Aug. 9

The Marlins confirmed Fernandez’s diagnosis as Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald noted there is currently no date scheduled for a potential return. He also reported Saturday that Fernandez flew back to Miami from Atlanta for an examination, which Miami also confirmed. 

Marlins manager Dan Jennings previously told Spencer he didn’t want to speculate on what could be going on with Fernandez’s injury:

Joe Frisaro of MLB.com noted Fernandez threw 76 pitches Friday after throwing 112 pitches last Sunday, which led the team to hope it was simply a case of “dead arm.”

The Marlins will be careful with their 23-year-old superstar. Fernandez didn’t debut this season until July 2 after rehabbing from Tommy John surgery performed in May 2014. He picked up where he left off with a 2.30 ERA and 53 strikeouts in 43 innings. 

Given how young and dominant Fernandez has been throughout his career, as well as the team being tied for last place in the National League East, the Marlins have no incentive to push him through anything. He needs to be ready for 2016 and beyond more than forcing the issue over the last two months of 2015.

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Jose Fernandez went into his Tommy John operation last May as one of baseball’s elite pitchers. Coming out of the operation, however, it wasn’t fair to expect him to pick up where he left off right away.

Instead, here we are a month into Fernandez’s return in 2015, and the only thing to say is this: Whoa.

You wouldn’t know that the Miami Marlins ace is a year removed from reconstructive elbow surgery. Fernandez has returned with a vengeance, following up the 2.25 ERA he posted across 2013 and 2014 with a 2.13 ERA in his first six starts of 2015. Rather than a pitcher struggling to get back on track, he looks better than ever.

And you don’t just have to look at his ERA to think as much.

Among the peripherals next to the 23-year-old right-hander’s sparkling ERA is a 1.75 FIP—that’s fielding independent pitching—that puts his 2.60 mark from 2013-2014 to shame. Feeding into this is an 11.1 K/9 rate, a career-low 2.1 BB/9 rate and a career-low 0.2 HR/9 rate.

And feeding into these, meanwhile, are career-best strike, swinging-strike and soft-contact and hard-contact rates:

Granted, we’re only looking at six starts. That’s a small sample size. 

But with Fernandez looking even more unhittable after his Tommy John surgery than he did before, you can’t help but wonder: Did the surgery somehow make him an even better pitcher?

This is generally not the best thought to have with a pitcher coming back from Tommy John. For while there is a train of thought that the surgery can be a performance enhancer, among the topics Will Carroll covered in his Tommy John series for B/R back in 2013 is the reality that this is not the case.

And there’s no need to tell the man himself. He knows.

“You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that from kids,” Fernandez told Anthony Castrovince of Sports on Earth in April. “They say, ‘Oh, I want to get Tommy John, because then I’m going to throw harder.’ Let me tell you something, kid. It’s not magic. Otherwise, everybody would do it. It’s really complicated and really tough and you have to be really disciplined.”

Knowing this, it’s best if we don’t wonder whether the surgery itself has changed Fernandez for the better. What we can wonder, however, is whether the experience of having gone through the surgery has done the trick.

What’s changed for Fernandez in 2015? Well, admittedly nothing stands out as much as his fastball velocity.

Through his six starts, Fernandez’s fastball has been sitting at a career-high 95.7 miles per hour. Per Brooks Baseball, that helps explain why he’s getting whiffs on a career-best 11.9 percent of his heaters and would seem to confirm the notion that Tommy John surgery can result in a velocity uptick.

But while this may be easy to notice, this is also where it’s dangerous to make assumptions.

Carroll noted in his piece that research has concluded that “there does not appear to be a lasting change in velocity for someone who has come back” from Tommy John. Given that he’s only made six starts, it’s very possible that Fernandez’s fastball velocity will prove the point by shifting downward as he throws more pitches and piles up more innings.

How Fernandez has been commanding his fastball, however, seems to point toward a lesson that his Tommy John operation taught him.

We saw how Fernandez has been throwing strikes at a higher rate, and part of the reason for that has to do with how often he’s finding the strike zone with his fastball. Per the PitchF/X data at FanGraphs, his four-seamer is hitting the zone a career-best 59.3 percent of the time.

Mind you, Fernandez had good fastball command to begin with. More than anything, that’s a result of his having mechanics that Doug Thorburn of Baseball Prospectus has graded as plus across the board.

But Brooks Baseball can show that there’s a slight difference this year. After Fernandez’s release point dropped from 2013 to 2014, it’s back up in 2015 to where it was in 2013. It thus may not be a coincidence that his fastball’s zone percentage is his best since 2013, not 2014.

That Fernandez’s release point has gone up at all looks like another non-coincidence. As he was going through his rehab earlier this summer, Fernandez told Christina De Nicola of Fox Sports Florida that he wanted to make sure his arm angle didn’t drop because doing so “obviously [puts] a lot of pressure to my elbow, and that’s the main reason I got hurt in my opinion.”

So, we can put two and two together. Fernandez’s injury warned him of the dangers of a low arm angle. He’s responded by raising his arm angle in 2015 to where it was in 2013. We shouldn’t be surprised that one of the results of that is a return of the fastball command he had that season.

And it looks like improved fastball command isn’t the only result of Fernandez’s release point going retro. His command of his breaking ball has also improved.

We don’t say this because Fernandez is throwing more curveballs—yes, calling it a slider also works—in the strike zone. Far from it, in fact, as his curveball’s zone rate of 41.3 percent is a career low.

Rather, we say it because, as Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs was first to observe, Fernandez is putting his curveballs in the best possible location. Instead of pounding the zone with his hook, Fernandez’s heat map (via Brooks Baseball) shows that he’s putting his curveballs just below the strike zone:

All that red shows that Fernandez has been bunching his curveballs below the knees off the corner of the zone on his glove side. Rather than more curves in the zone, this means he’s throwing more curves that sweep across the zone only to end up in a spot where they can’t be hit. They’re bait that hitters can’t resist, and also can’t catch.

No need to use your imagination. Via Pitcher List, here’s San Francisco‘s Justin Maxwell illustrating the point in Fernandez’s 2015 debut back on July 2:

Fernandez has gotten a lot of swings like that on his curveball, as it’s drawing cuts outside the zone an absurd 55.2 percent of the time. On a related note, Brooks Baseball puts the whiff rate on Fernandez’s curveball at a career-high 26.3 percent.

Like his improved fastball command, this traces back to Fernandez’s raised arm slot. When he told De Nicola about wanting to keep his release point elevated, he noted that it was particularly important for him to stay on top of his curveball. And as Sullivan correctly observed: “Dropping down would cause the pitch to flatten out. Staying on top would aid him in spotting the pitch somewhere low.”

So while nothing should be taken for granted with Fernandez’s fastball velocity, it does look like his learning the hard way through Tommy John has had its benefits. By raising his arm angle, he’s achieved better-than-ever command of both his electric fastball and his electric curveball.

But there’s another adjustment at play in Fernandez’s successful return, and this one involves his changeup.

Fernandez has always had a changeup, but he treated it as more of a show-me pitch in throwing it just 9.2 percent of the time across 2013 and 2014. This year, however, he’s throwing it in 14.3 percent of his offerings. For the first time, it’s a legit third pitch.

Not surprisingly, left-handed batters have been on the receiving end of Fernandez’s increased changeup usage. Brooks Baseball says over 25 percent of Fernandez’s pitches to lefty batters have been changeups, and that’s been bad news for them. They’re swinging and missing 18.2 percent of the time at the changeup and hitting it at just a .167 clip.

This isn’t surprising. Though it’s not as impressive as his curveball, Michael Beller of SI.com rated Fernandez’s changeup as another plus-plus pitch. And he has the GIFs to prove it, too.

Why is Fernandez throwing more changeups? Maybe it’s as simple as his wanting to be a more complete pitcher by expanding his arsenal from two pitches to three. But we can also theorize that this is another lifestyle change inspired by his Tommy John operation.

Though it’s uncertain whether breaking balls are dangerous for a pitcher’s elbow, a 2012 article by Jon Roegele at Beyond the Box Score indicates that high-velocity breaking balls (sliders more so than curves) may be dangerous.

Since Fernandez’s curveball comes in at over 83 miles per hour, it definitely qualifies as a high-velocity breaking ball. It may, therefore, be a risky pitch to begin with. And if so, he upped the risk by throwing it nearly 40 percent of the time in 2014.

So far in 2015, Fernandez is throwing his hook just about 32 percent of the time. His increased changeup usage has thus come at the expense of his curveball usage. In addition to keeping his arm slot high, that could be another change dedicated to preserving his elbow.

If so, Fernandez has learned all the right lessons from undergoing Tommy John surgery. We can’t say that the surgery itself has made him better, but it does look like he’s turned himself into a better pitcher by avoiding the things that landed him on the operating table in the first place.

This is bad news for all the poor hitters who have to go up against Fernandez. When his elbow quit on him last year, goodness knows how many of them were hoping that would put a permanent end to his reign of terror.

Instead, it doesn’t look like Tommy John surgery stopped it. It looks like it merely postponed it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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He’s coming back. Whisper it, sing it, shout it from the mountaintop—Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins, arguably the most exciting young arm in baseball, is about to pitch in a big league game for the first time in more than a year. 

This season has given us an avalanche of burgeoning stars: Kris Bryant, Noah Syndergaard, Joey Gallo, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, among others. So it’s easy to get distracted, to forget what Fernandez meant and, more importantly, what he could mean.

The Marlins right-hander has been MIA since May 2014, an eternity in our modern, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world.

Allow us to refresh your memory. Or, actually, just go ahead and watch this:

That’s filth, cheddar, gas—pick your ham-fisted metaphor. Fernandez has the stuff to be the best pitcher in the game—no hyperbole—and he’s only 22 years old.

In fact, those highlights up there are from 2013, when he broke in as a 20-year-old wunderkind and wound up winning Rookie of the Year honors with a 2.19 ERA and 187 strikeouts in 172.2 innings.

Entering the 2014 campaign, it was worth wondering whether Fernandez would knock Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw off of his Cy Young pedestal. Or, as Sports Illustrated‘s Cliff Corcoran put it in August 2013, “[If] this is how he pitches as a raw rookie after having just two months to adjust to making the leap from High-A to the majors, how good is he going to be next year?”

Unfortunately, those sky-high expectations crashed to Earth when Fernandez went down after eight starts with a torn ulnar collateral ligament and had to undergo Tommy John surgery. 

It’s a familiar tale. Right in Fernandez’s division, the National League East, you’ll find two other emerging studs who ran the Tommy John gauntlet: Matt Harvey of the New York Mets and the Washington Nationals‘ Stephen Strasburg.

The good news for Fernandez and the Marlins is that both Harvey and Strasburg returned strong.  

That said, even elite hurlers usually face an adjustment period coming back from Tommy John. ESPNNewYork.com’s Adam Rubin cited data collected by Dr. Glenn Fleisig, research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute, that shows 80 percent of pitchers successfully return to the big leagues after the increasingly common procedure but typically take six months to hit their stride.

Fernandez’s final rehab tuneup Saturday for Double-A Jacksonville offered encouraging but imperfect results, per CBS Sports‘ Jason Lempert: 5 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 8 SO.

Don’t ask folks in South Beach to temper their expectations, though.

Not after suffering through a disappointing season, during which the Marlins have limped to a 31-46 record entering play Tuesday.

Not after a head-scratching managerial saga that saw Mike Redmond kicked to the curb in favor of Dan Jennings, who stepped down from the general manager’s office with zero pro coaching experience.

Not with Giancarlo Stanton sidelined for four to six weeks with a broken hamate bone.

When Fernandez takes the hill Thursday at Marlins Park, he’ll carry the last, best hope of Marlins fans with him. Surely they want—desperately—to see that guy, the one capable of carrying the franchise with his crackling high-90s fastball and golden right arm.

Surely it’s been agony for Fernandez to sit on the sideline, to get a tantalizing taste of MLB success and then be forced to watch the action like a common spectator. Now, however, on the eve of his comeback, he talks about the experience like a seasoned veteran.

“I feel like I’ve gotten a little better. Not only for pitching but for everything in life,” he told Craig Davis of the Sun Sentinel. “I’ve been following it for 13 months, so if I learned something, it’s how to be patient. It was much needed at my age.”

At long last, Fernandez gets to start learning lessons between the lines again. He gets to pull on a uniform, grab a sphere of cowhide, yarn and cork and try to throw it past the best hitters in the world.

He’s coming back, and that’s good news for us all.

All statistics current as of June 29 and courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. 

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Jose Fernandez is still learning how to make a deliberate comeback. 

He is coming back from the first significant injury of his baseball life. It’s been a long process to this point as he nears his return to the Miami Marlins sometime within the next month, if everything stays on schedule. His natural tendency is to throttle forward and punch it, especially since he hasn’t pitched in the majors in more than a year. 

That is why the Marlins must protect their ace from himself.

The 22-year-old Fernandez made his first rehab start Saturday since having Tommy John surgery in May 2014. He cranked it up, as he is known to do, his fastball topping out at 99 mph in the 54-pitch outing for Class A Jupiter. His two strikeouts both came on 97 mph fastballs.

“That means I was a little amped up,” Fernandez told reporters after the game.

The outing was a success despite Fernandez allowing five runs on eight hits in three innings because he came out of it healthy. And as long as that continues to happen, the final lines will not matter too much. 

The lines that will matter during Fernandez’s rehab are those of the Marlins. Where they sit in the National League East standings at the time their ace is set to return should have more of an effect on how he is deployed going forward.

Their need for Fernandez is voided if they continue to torpedo downward in the standings. Their season is already wasting away at 10 games under .500 and seven games out of first place with three teams in front of them. They are farther back in the wild-card standings, with more teams to beat out.

Their rotation has been depleted with Mat Latos, Henderson Alvarez and Jarred Cosart all on the disabled list with Fernandez, and none of them have been very effective when they have been healthy. Through Monday’s action, the rotation’s ERA is 4.42, which ranks 11th out of 15 NL teams. Heading into Monday’s loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, in which fill-in starter Brad Hand lasted less than an inning and allowed six earned runs on six hits, the Marlins also ranked 11th in the NL in WAR (2.4), per FanGraphs.

The injuries to Alvarez, Latos and Cosart—those three were expected to lead the rotation during Fernandez’s injury—have been significant, but so have their shoddy performances.

“Is it a big blow? Absolutely,” manager Dan Jennings told reporters. “Those guys came into the season one, two and three.”

Because of where the Marlins stand, and how they got there in the first place, Fernandez is undoubtedly eyeing his return to stall the rotation’s struggles and find a way to pitch the Marlins back into relevancy. But that is the thought process of a young pitcher and completely unrealistic, as the Marlins are far from a single pitcher on an innings limit saving their season.

The bullpen has thrown 195 innings, the second-highest total in the league, and its ERA (3.74) and WHIP (1.33) are 11th.

The offense ranks 11th in OBP (.309), OPS (.686), weighted on-base average (.301), 12th in slugging percentage (.377) and 13th in weighted runs created plus (87), according to FanGraphs.

Fernandez has been patient through his entire recovery, and in spring training he even acknowledged he had surprised himself with that fact.

“Knowing how I am, I thought I was going to be crazy,” Fernandez told reporters in February. “It hasn’t been easy. But I think this surgery teaches you a lot. It teaches you as a person and teaches you how to be patient.”

But patience can wear thin. The Marlins as a franchise know that—their 2012 fire sale is plenty of proof—and the team’s standing could make their ace a little jumpy as his return date draws closer.

Fernandez is on a five-start plan with strict limits on pitch counts. His next start is expected to be Friday, and then the Marlins will discuss his next steps in the process.

What should also be discussed is if the Marlins can realistically find their way back into the playoff race. And with that, reassuring themselves that Fernandez’s tight leash cannot wriggle loose at any point, especially if games become meaningless after his return. Fernandez has to continue surprising himself with patience.

“No pain. I feel great. I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made in 3 months. Being patient is the biggest thing.” -José Fernandez

— #VoteMarlins (@Marlins) August 13, 2014

He is a franchise cornerstone, the pitching equivalent to Giancarlo Stanton. Handling his comeback with the utmost care is the way to go. No matter what.

So far, Fernandez seems to understand that.

“I feel really, really healthy,” Fernandez told reporters after his rehab start, “and I can’t ask for anything else.”

Neither can the Marlins.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Giancarlo Stanton has accomplished a lot in his young career, but this offseason he did something that seemed utterly impossible: He convinced owner Jeffrey Loria to put the Miami Marlins in a position to succeed. 

In November, Loria and the Marlins signed Stanton to the biggest contract in baseball history. The deal served as a $325 million domino that led to an offseason of free-agent signings and trades that made actual baseball sense, something Loria has a track record of ignoring.

In an exhaustive feature on Stanton, ESPN The Magazine‘s Tim Keown wrote that the Marlins star didn’t demand just the 13 years and the parking garage full of Brink’s trucks that came with the deal. Stanton required a commitment to success. 

“I’m not going to sign just any contract because I got hit in the head,” he said. 

The deal ended up including an opt-out after six years and the first no-trade clause Loria has ever granted. Those serve as protection for Stanton in case the front office doesn’t keep its promise to field a winner. 

But so far the organization has held up its end of the bargain.

Michael Morse, Ichiro Suzuki, Dee Gordon, Martin Prado, Dan Haren and Mat Latos all found their way to Miami this winter because of the new leaf the organization has apparently turned over. 

Now, for the first time since they started calling themselves “Miami,” the Marlins can also call themselves contenders.

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