Sandy Alcantara’s name often comes up as a trade candidate for the New York Mets and any other team with payroll space and need in the rotation. As Miami Marlins lore goes, they’re always willing to sell you their best players. Whether it’s fresh off a World Series or not, they’ve been a feeder organization for many of the more consistent high spenders.

Alcantara is coming off of a strange year back from Tommy John surgery. He was terrible to start and much better in the final two months. His contract calls for $17.3 million this coming year with a team option of $21 million for 2027. He’s a natural match for any team looking to compete right now. So why not just stay in Miami?

You want four reasons why the Mets aren’t going to land Alcantara? They were 4 games behind the Mets in 2025. They even held the tie-breaker over the Mets with a 7-6 regular season record as well as the Cincinnati Reds, going 4-2.

Surely the Marlins can’t be serious if they think they can compete in 2026, right?

Unfortunately, the Marlins are more than late-season spoilers for the Mets. Taking 2 of the last 3 against the Mets in the final weekend of the season wasn’t just a bad team playing up. They were peers with the Mets in 2025 if we look at their records. 79 wins and 83 are uncomfortably close.

The Marlins aren’t without their issues. Their starting pitching, while a strength in theory, had the 26th highest ERA in baseball last year. The bullpen wasn’t much better with the 22nd highest ERA.

Taking them seriously can be difficult because even when we compare them to the Mets in their worst month, the talent just doesn’t seem to match. They have players on the rise, but no true superstar. While we might assume they’d want some MLB-ready bats in exchange for Alcantara, they actually had the 16th most runs scored last year with what felt like an inferior lineup.

Never much of a threat in free agency, there has yet to be a true indication of things changing this offseason. We shouldn’t worry about the Marlins stealing free agents from the Mets. A conclusion we can come to is that they have little reason to get rid of Alcantara. Their payroll is minimal. It’d be senseless to trade him to save cash when barely anyone else on the roster is getting paid a thing. Sometimes fans get caught into a trap believing everyone on their team is up for sale the same way fans in other places believe the Mets will casually add bad contracts to the payroll in Queens. It doesn’t work this way.

Alcantara finished the 2025 season strong, but he wasn’t Cy Young caliber. ERAs of 3.69 and 3.71 in August and September respectively, his greatest triumph was going 7 innings in 6 of his final 10 starts in those months. Prone to give up a home run, scatter a few hits, and not strike out a whole lot of batters, the Marlins mine as well wait and see if they can get anything more for him at the trade deadline. Right now, starting pitcher-needy clubs should be spending money on players of his ability, not minor league assets.

The Marlins are expected to spend more next year, however slight as it may be. It only furthers the case that they believe they can play spoiler and take advantage of a National League that lacked 6 true playoff worthy clubs in 2025. They aren’t one or two players away from a championship. They might be keeping Alcantara and adding one or two players away from winning 84 games. That’s apparently all it may take.