ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ One former Marlins No. 1 pitcher criticized the team's current lack of one, and manager Don Mattingly didn't like it.
Dontrelle Willis, the mid-2000s ace for the then-Florida Marlins, tweeted Wednesday about the Miami rotation, which entered the season without a clear leader and one month into the season does not compare favorably to others around baseball.
"Marlins rotation need [sic] to show some fight and someone needs to step and say enough is enough," wrote Willis, who is an analyst for Fox Sports 1. "Talented group but needs a bulldog."
Mattingly was quick to defend his starting staff.
"We are what we are. This is our staff. If you're saying you want guys to fight more, I don't know what that means," Mattingly said. "We want our guys to be battling every day, pitching their tails off, improving. But we are who we are."
Willis knows a little something about leading a rotation. After helping the Marlins to the 2003 World Series victory, Willis was named National League Rookie of the Year. He was also the NL Cy Young Award runner-up in 2005, and in five seasons with the Marlins had a 68-54 record, 3.78 ERA and 1.36 WHIP while averaging more than 200 innings per season. According to Baseball Reference's WAR, Willis (21 WAR) is the second most valuable pitcher in the history of the franchise behind Josh Johnson (25 WAR).
Through glimpses of promise from this year's bunch, the bottom-line results have been poor. Marlins starters had a collective 4.89 ERA entering play Thursday, 28th in baseball. They rank 29th by lasting about five innings per game.
"I haven't seen Dontrelle around, so I don't know if he truly knows what we have," Mattingly said. "This is our team. We'd love to have [Clayton] Kershaw and [Madison] Bumgarner and every best pitcher in baseball. This is our team.
"Our guys are competing. They're fighting. Do we want to get better? Absolutely. But I don't think it's because of a lack of want to."
