Jorge Soler has always had big power potential. His power was his carrying tool as a prospect, and he homered in his first big league plate appearance. Unfortunately, he’s had trouble making the most of his strength throughout his career. For years, Soler was an “if he can put it all together” kind of player. His raw power was enticing, but injuries and inconsistency kept getting in the way. From 2014 to ’18, he hit just 38 home runs in 307 games, a pace of 20 per 162.

Finally, in 2019, everything clicked. The 6-foot-4 slugger played all 162 games, walloping an AL-leading 48 home runs. He finished fifth in the league in slugging, third in isolated power, and 13th in wRC+. His wRC+ went up every month, and no player in baseball hit for more power over the final two months of the season. He lost the Silver Slugger at DH to an ageless Nelson Cruz, but all the same, Soler was finally living up to the hype. There was even talk of the Royals signing him to a long-term deal.

But that extension never came, and Soler’s performance over the rest of his Royals tenure dashed any dreams he might have had of a lucrative long-term contract. In 2020, his old problems came back to haunt him. He didn’t make the most of his power, hitting only eight home runs in 43 games, and injuries kept him off the field for several weeks in September. The following season started out even worse; in 95 games with Kansas City, he hit 13 home runs and posted a feeble 77 wRC+. At the trade deadline, the former home run king was sent to Atlanta for pennies on the dollar. Read the rest of this entry »

We are only a few weeks away from the midpoint of the season, and so far, there have been a fair share of surprises across multiple divisions. One of those comes from the NL East. No, it’s not the Braves, who sit atop the division with the second-best winning percentage in the National League; that was expected. The surprise is the Marlins, who are second in the division with a 37–31 record, 3.5 games ahead of the Phillies and 5.5 games ahead of the Mets. These are not insurmountable gaps, but it’s still impressive given what the projections were for Miami in particular.

With the ninth-worst run differential in the game, it’s not clear if the Marlins will sustain this winning pace. But they have gotten some legitimate performances from hitters that they simply have not had in previous seasons. Luis Arraez hasn’t stopped hitting since he got to Miami, and Jorge Soler is amidst yet another bounce back and clubbing homers all over the park. As a team desperate for offense, it’s been great to have those two hitting so well — and luckily, they aren’t the only two hitting. Bryan De La Cruz and Jesús Sánchez have been key to the Marlins’ success as well.

Both De La Cruz and Sánchez came to the team from fantastic player development organizations in Houston and Tampa Bay, respectively. De La Cruz is in his age-26 season, and Sánchez is in his age-25 season. Both are still under 1,000 career plate appearances and have been rather slow burns developmentally after struggling at different stages in their respective careers. And both have always shown interesting skills that suggested there was still some developmental meat left on the bone, as Eric Longenhagen would say. The flashes of success between 2021 and ’22 were interesting, but now each of them are legit contributors who have cemented their positions in the middle of Miami’s lineup and long-term plans. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in mid-April, I took the opportunity to gawk at Luis Arraez’s hot start — he’d gone 24-for-51 in his first 15 games — under the assumption that he’d cool off and stop being so interesting fairly soon. Well, Arraez has cooled off, but not as much as you’d think. On Saturday, the Marlins second baseman went 5-for-5 with three doubles to break out of a slump: He’d gone 1-for-6 with one strikeout across the previous two games. Before that, he’d had multiple hits in his previous three games.

Sunday against Oakland, Arraez added two more hits to bring his seasonal batting line to .392/.445/.485. After that hellacious 15-game start to the season, Arraez has hit .362 in his cooldown period and has struck out just seven times in his past 40 games.

Nothing has really changed about Arraez as a hitter since the last time I wrote about him. He’s still making more contact than anyone else in baseball and spraying soft line drives around the diamond like Carlos Alcaraz in spikes. But over the past week, while Arraez was taping “kick me” signs to opposing pitchers’ backs, we passed two important milestones on the baseball calendar: Memorial Day and the start of the NCAA Tournament. That means we’re no longer in the fluky part of the season, and what you’re seeing might actually be real.

So let’s get down to it: Can Arraez hit .400? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Miami Marlins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The Marlins were the subject of jokes aplenty this winter after they added two established second basemen, Luis Arraez and Jean Segura, to a roster that already featured multiple capable keystone defenders. Yet all jokes aside, Kim Ng’s unconventional method of roster construction has worked out quite well thus far. Arraez leads all primary second basemen with a 151 wRC+, and his defense is tolerable as long as he keeps hitting. Meanwhile, Jazz Chisholm Jr., though currently on the IL, has adjusted well to center field, and Jon Berti and Joey Wendle have been an excellent defensive tandem at shortstop.

However, the second baseman the Marlins signed to play third is struggling terribly. Segura is slashing .200/.268/.236 (the rare .200/.200/.200 batting line, also known as a Paul Janish), and he is one of only five qualified hitters without a home run (an achievement known as a Reggie Willits). His 43 wRC+ ranks last in baseball, as does his .231 wOBA and .504 OPS. The only qualified hitter with a lower WAR is José Abreu, who has had an additional five games in which to be dreadful. Segura’s only saving grace is that he has hit well in 15 high-leverage plate appearances (.385 AVG, 134 wRC+), but even so, his -1.31 WPA is the worst in the National League.

The last qualified batter to finish with a wRC+ below 45 was Clint Barmes, who posted a 38 wRC+ in 2006. Since then, only five other players have even finished below 50; typically, hitters either improve as the year goes on, or they don’t get enough playing time to qualify. As for the handful who lasted a full season with such a feeble bat, the only one to have been an above-average hitter throughout the rest of his career was Chris Davis of the Baltimore Orioles. His 46 wRC+ in 2017 was a huge step down from his career 117 wRC+ to that point. Read the rest of this entry »

Position changes can be risky. The outcome depends heavily on the timing and circumstances of the switch, and the natural ability of the player. Sometimes, rookies need to carve out a roster spot for themselves and end up switching on the fly, like Jordan Walker. His shift to the outfield is a work in progress, just like it would be for most rookies. Then there are cases of a more experienced player moving due to roster construction, as with Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s move to center field.

Chisholm’s switch was precipitated by the Marlins’ offseason trade for Luis Arraez. With the sixth-worst offense (88 wRC+) in all of baseball in 2022 and good starting pitching depth, a pitcher-hitter swap to improve the lineup was highly logical, and the Marlins saw their best chance to obtain an impact bat in Arraez. That created something of an infield logjam. With Joey Wendle penciled in at shortstop and Jean Segura at third, the question became what they would do with their young star, who was slated to start at second base. Soon after the announcement of the trade, Kim Ng revealed that Jazz would be moving to center field, their most important position of need. His speed, athleticism, and lack of premium defense on the infield made it worth a try. Read the rest of this entry »

For the purposes of researching this article, I went through Baseball Savant and watched several of Luis Arraez’s hits from the 2023 season. You can tell what kind of a heater he’s on by how the broadcast booth reacts when he gets a hit. Marlins play-by-play man Paul Severino, declaring that Arraez was in the midst of yet another multi-hit game, would chuckle as the ball touched outfield grass. On one occasion, Phillies announcer John Kruk muttered, “Jesus!” as Arraez dropped a triple down the right field line.

Arraez is so hot it’s entered the realm of the absurd. Through 15 games, he’s 24-for-51, mostly on singles that army crawl past bewildered infielders or fall softly in front of outfielders. As of Monday afternoon, he has yet to hit a ball with an exit velocity of 100 mph or greater. Ryan Mountcastle, who’s hitting .217 to Arraez’s .471, has 25 such batted balls.

The obvious thing to do in this situation would be to point out all the ways Arraez is getting lucky. He’s a fringy runner with a ninth-percentile (ninth-percentile!) hard-hit rate and a BABIP of .500, and so on and so forth. And ordinarily, I am the kind of relentless downer who goes around ruining other people’s good time. (Hope you enjoyed those wonderful shrimp tacos you had for lunch; the sea is full of microplastics and you’re going to die someday.) But I’m declaring Arraez’s hot start to be a negativity-free zone.

So let’s get to it. Is Arraez some kind of a wizard, or is he just getting lucky? The answer is yes. Read the rest of this entry »

If the Marlins are going to jump into playoff contention anytime soon, it will be on the back of their young pitchers. Of these, they have assembled many, with varied results. Sandy Alcantara just won the Cy Young. Trevor Rogers looked like a future Cy Young winner for a little bit, though not so much anymore. Max Meyer got hurt but should be back soon enough. Sixto Sánchez got hurt and might not be the back ever. The Marlins even declared a surplus in this area, trading Pablo López (and Zac Gallen, if you want to broaden your time horizons a little) for position players. Braxton Garrett, Edward Cabrera, and a partridge in a pear tree.

But Miami’s most promising young starter at the moment, other than Alcantara, is Jesús Luzardo. He faces the Phillies on Tuesday night having allowed just one earned run in 12 2/3 innings over his first two starts of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Three Sundays ago, the answer to this column’s weekly quiz was Carlos Santana. The question was, “Which player has appeared in the most regular-season games over the past 10 seasons?” and the now-Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman had played in 1,440 — 13 more than Paul Goldschmidt and 40 more than Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rizzo.

Santana professed not to be aware of the distinction when I mentioned it to him earlier this week. He did seem pleased to hear it, and “humbly prideful” might be the best way to describe his reaction.

“I prepare,” said Santana, who celebrated his 37th birthday yesterday. “I prepare my body. I prepare mentally. I also try to enjoy the game every day. That’s why I can play a lot. The game is my passion. This is my 14th year and I want to play two more. Or maybe three more. Whatever God tells me, and what my body says I can do.”

Count Andrew McCutchen among those who are impressed by his teammate’s reliability and durability over the years.

“It’s really good, to be honest,” said McCutchen, who was likewise unaware of Santana’s distinction. “To be able to do it how he’s done it — he’s in [the lineup] more times than not —shows that he’s stayed healthy, which is a key to doing that. You have to be good enough to do it, too. You’ve got a whole lot of variables to be able to do what he’s done.” Read the rest of this entry »

The ribbon has been cut on the 2023 season and I wanted to push a few prospect updates live to The Board, including a few tweaks to the Top 100 list. This update also includes publication of scouting reports such that every rookie currently on an active roster now has a current record on The Board, and a few additions the farm systems I’ve already audited during this cycle based on things I saw during spring training.

Let’s start with injury-related updates to the Top 100. Phillies top prospect Andrew Painter has a partially torn UCL and is approaching the end of his four-week shutdown period. Rule of thumb: Among a similarly talented group of players, you’d most want to have the healthy guys. Painter slides from fifth overall to 12th, right behind newly minted big leaguers Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who are comparably talented, healthy, and making a big league impact right now. This is just a cosmetic change to the list; Painter’s evaluation hasn’t changed. If it turns out he needs Tommy John, whether or not I slide him any further will depend on its timing. If rest doesn’t work and his surgery is timed such that he also misses all of 2024, that’s the worst case scenario for Painter and the Phillies. We know for sure that Nationals pitching prospect Cade Cavalli needs Tommy John, so in a similar fashion he falls within the 50 FV player tier, sliding from 63rd overall to 99th, right next to Mason Miller of the A’s, with whom he now shares injury-related relief risk.

Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe, the third overall pick in 2021, is going to miss three to six months due to lumbar spine inflammation. This injury is more novel than a TJ, and Jobe isn’t exactly coming off a great 2022. Unfortunately, this situation merits a more meaningful shift, but I still want to reflect the upside of a healthy Jobe, so he downshifts to the 45+ FV tier, where the most talented of the young high-variance prospects reside. Assuming he comes back late this season, he’ll be one of the higher-priority evaluations in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »