Another Marlins’ 2020 draftee puts on dazzling performance. Plus more minor-league updates
Max Meyer and Jake Eder provided the Miami Marlins’ pitching highlights during the first week of the minor-league season.
Another member of their draft class upped the ante last week.
Zach McCambley, the Marlins’ third-round pick in 2020 out of Coastal Carolina and the No. 23 overall prospect in the organization according to MLB Pipeline, threw seven perfect innings on Tuesday in his second career professional baseball start for the Class A Advanced Beloit Snappers.
Twenty-one batters faced. Twenty-one outs.
McCambley struck out eight batters he faced in the outing against the South Bend Cubs. He threw 85 pitches, 56 of which went for strikes. Only four of the Cubs’ plate appearances against McCambley lasted longer than five pitches.
Through two starts, McCambley has a 1.64 ERA over 11 innings, with 15 strikeouts against four hits and a pair of walks.
The 22-year-old relies primarily on a fastball that tops out around 96 mph and a breaking ball that is in the low 80s. He’s also developing a changeup to give himself a needed third pitch.
His breaking ball was the pitch that stood out the most to Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore when he recruiting McCambley out of high school.
“It’s more of a true curveball and yet it reacts like a very high, harsh slider,” Gilmore said. “It’s got a lot of tumbling downward action but it’s the lateness of the break. Most curveball guys, somewhere about halfway through the plate good hitters’ vision allows them to pick that thing up and figure out whether it’s a ball or strike.
“With Zach, it’s just so tight. When he’s really throwing it well, he’s able to add and subtract the spin rate to it to take a little while, get ahead in the count and use it as a strikeout pitch when he needs to and still have command. It’s just the lateness out of the hand and the similarities [of pitches] coming out of his hand as a fastball or breaking ball. Not everybody has that.”
Maximizing his command of the pitch was key in McCambley having a strong junior season, albeit a shortened one in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 25 innings over four starts at Coastal Carolina in that final season, McCambley posted a 1.80 ERA with 32 strikeouts against just seven walks.
“He just throws strikes,” Marlins amateur scouting director DJ Svihlik said in June after the 2020 MLB Draft.
But the Marlins had to wait nearly a year to see how McCambley’s stuff would play out in professional ball. The 2020 minor-league season was canceled due to COVID-19, and McCambley wasn’t part of the Marlins’ player pool at the alternate site.
Their first looks at him in person as a member of the organization came during a month-long instructional league camp in October and spring training, but the club limited him and the other 2020 draft class members to work on the back fields.
“I know what I’m capable of,” McCambley said during spring training, “and I’m just going to continue to keep learning.”
As for pitchers he watched and tried to emulate growing up? The main two, McCambley said, were Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez. He also like Walker Buehler and Adam Wainwright among active pitchers.
“Not necessarily modeling my game after them,” McCambley said, “but kind of just try to follow in their footsteps and look for pitch grips. I do a lot of research online, just seeing how they approach the game and I’m very interested in how those guys act professionally. I hope to be at that level someday.”
More prospect notables
▪ Right-handed pitcher Max Meyer (No. 3): Meyer struggled in his second pro start, giving up five earned runs on eight hits and two walks over four innings with the Double A Pensacola Blue Wahoos.
▪ Outfielder Jesus Sanchez (No. 6): Yeah. He’s still dominating. Sanchez had five hits in four games last week for the Triple A Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, including two home runs and a triple. He’s batting .500 with a 1.585 on-base-plus slugging mark.
▪ Middle infielder Nasim Nunez (No. 13): The speedy 20-year-old has stolen 11 bases through 10 games with Class A Jupiter. That’s the most across minor-league baseball through the first two weeks of the season.
▪ Outfielder Connor Scott (No. 16): The Marlins’ 2018 first-round pick is hitting .341 with 14 runs scored, three doubles, a triple and a home run through the first two weeks of the season with Beloit. He has five multi-hit games and at least one hit in nine of 11 games played.
▪ Right-handed pitcher Kyle Nicolas (No. 17): Like McCambley, Nicolas has strung together a pair of quality performances in his first two pro ball starts at Beloit. The Marlins’ competitive balance pick in the 2020 draft has given up just four hits and two earned runs over 10 1/3 innings — a 1.74 ERA — while striking out a dozen batters. His fastball has been comfortably sitting between 95-98 mph and has shown improved command of both of his breaking pitches.
▪ Outfielder Griffin Conine (No. 18): The son of former Marlin Jeff Conine hit .333 (6 for 18) with three home runs, five RBI, four walks and five runs scored over the past five games with Beloit.
▪ Left-handed pitcher Jake Eder (No. 24): The Marlins’ 2020 fourth-round pick out of Vanderbilt continues to impress in Pensacola. Eder threw five scoreless innings for a second consecutive outing. He has 19 strikeouts against five hits and four walks through his first two pro starts.
