Miami Needs This Generation’s Pudge

Throughout history, the Miami Marlins have only produced four kinds of season: The star-studded World Series team of 1997, the star-studded last place team of 2012, unwatchable detritus, and a feisty .500ish club with some fun talent. (The 2003 World Series-winning Marlins were the latter group, plus a one-year cameo by Ivan Rodriguez.)

The 2025 Marlins were expected to be unwatchable detritus, but turned out to be feisty and competitive. I don’t think anyone would accuse these Marlins of being as talented as previous feisty-competitive Miami squads. I’m thinking of the 2014 squad that won 77 games with a roster that featured Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, Nathan Eovaldi, as well as (very briefly) Enrique Hernández, J.T. Realmuto, Andrew Heaney, and José Fernández.

That team looked like a juggernaut in the making, because it had a roster full of guys who would spend most of the next decade starting for playoff teams. Just, you know, other playoff teams, and not the Marlins.

This version of the Marlins… not so much. In 2025, Miami had just one player — Kyle Stowers — put up a season of more than 2.5 WAR. Their pitching WAR leader was not Eury Pérez or Sandy Alcantara, but Janson Junk. The longtime Quad-A journeyman didn’t have a stupendous breakout season; he just threw 110 innings and didn’t allow (and this is figurative language, but only barely) any walks or home runs.

To some extent, Junk is representative of the 2025 Marlins, whose greatest successes came from journeymen, post-hype sleeper prospects, and former non-prospects who turned into solid regulars or better. That describes Tyler Phillips, Jakob Marsee, even Stowers to some extent.

Building castoffs and no-hopers into worthwhile regulars is an important part of filling out a playoff-quality lineup, but we’re not looking at the 2025 Marlins like the 2022 Orioles or the 2014 Astros, wondering where they’re going to fit all these top-10 global prospects in one lineup. Miami’s only top-50 prospect from last offseason, Agustín Ramírez, played the whole 2025 season in the majors. He posted a 91 wRC+, which isn’t bad at all for a rookie catcher, but he was 39th out of 40 major league backstops (minimum 500 innings played) in defensive value.

Why worry about Ramírez, when the Marlins surpassed expectations in 2025? Because getting to a respectable third place finish isn’t the goal: The goal is to make the playoffs, or at least it should be.

And the NL East, so often one of the toughest divisions in the league, looks unusually winnable next season. The Braves are hoping their 2025 campaign was an aberration and not an omen; the Mets missed the playoffs and are still working to replace key departures; the Phillies are getting older and weirder and will start the season down Zack Wheeler. I would expect all of those teams to be better than Miami, but it wouldn’t be the shock of a lifetime if the Marlins, with a couple lucky breaks, picked any of them off.

As has so often been the case for Miami, you can see where the homegrown pitching can be a strength. Any path to immediate contention for Miami involves Pérez and Alcantara returning to peak form, but don’t discount the strides Edward Cabrera has made, or the impact of a healthy Braxton Garrett and/or Max Meyer, or the potential lurking in Triple-A in the form of lefty prospects Thomas White and Robby Snelling. The pitching talent necessary to contend is already there.

The big question is whether the Marlins can hit enough for the pitching to matter. They are unique among the 30 major league teams in that they haven’t lost a single major league free agent. Every position player who logged 70 or more plate appearances for the Marlins and ended the season with the organization is still in the organization today. Unfortunately, a little more turnover might be a good thing.

Wow, Stowers was awesome this past year, wasn’t he? Everyone else, less so. With a talented pitching staff and at least average team defense, the Marlins have to improve offensively to compete. And they’ll have to do it without having a franchise hitter waiting in Triple-A. The Marlins’ best near-majors prospect is catcher Joe Mack, who was just added to the 40-man roster. Mack has solid defensive attributes and very good power for a backstop, but in July, Eric Longenhagen graded his hit tool a present 20 and future 30. This is probably not the next Cal Raleigh.

So the Marlins are going to have to improve the players they have at the major league level. One of the prime candidates is shortstop Otto Lopez. Matt Martell was able to ask Marlins manager Clayton McCullough about Lopez at the Winter Meetings last week.

“Andrew Guerrero, our hitting coach, did a great job [with Lopez],” McCullough said. “His strikeout rate was very much in line with where it has to be. His launch angle went up. His walk rate increased by a couple percent. He already came into it with some good ingredients. He makes a ton of contact, and he’s strong, so there’s probably more in there that we can tap into.”

Matt put it to McCullough that perhaps the Marlins could follow the contact-heavy route the Blue Jays and Brewers traveled to great success in 2025. It seems plausible.

“Actually, we have a lot of players where their skill set is making contact: Xavier Edwards, Otto Lopez, even Agustín,” said McCullough. “We have guys who can make contact, and now we’re doubling down as much as we can on plate discipline. Not every strike is created equal… Our guys control the strike zone. They already have a unique ability to make contact at a high rate. And now, if we can turn some of that contact into a little different output, that’s when you see players really take strides offensively.”

That sounds like wishful thinking: Oh, maybe our slap-hitting guys can turn into power hitters and we’ll be good. But it happens! In fact, the reason I’m interested in the Marlins’ offense is because I wrote about it happening about a month ago. Geraldo Perdomo and Maikel Garcia both started as slap-hitting shortstops, but have evolved into very good all-around offensive players and down-ballot MVP vote-getters. (And, as of this weekend, both Perdomo and Garcia are very well-compensated.)

Using Perdomo and Garcia as a precedent, I searched for hitters with a certain combination of contact rate, plate discipline, low bat speed, and defensive value. The idea was to see who has the underlying tools to benefit from letting it eat more often.

And when I came to the Marlins’ roster, the Perdometer started clicking like crazy. I identified four potential breakout candidates, of whom two — Edwards and Liam Hicks — play for the Marlins.

You have to want it, but there’s potential for offensive growth at some key up-the-middle positions. Maybe Ramírez takes a step forward in Year 2. And here’s the best news. Let’s make the following assumptions: that Marsee is going to keep on rolling in center field; that Lopez, Edwards, and Hicks can access at least some of that Perdomo magic; that some combination of Ramírez, Hicks, and Mack can handle things behind the plate while still providing tangible offensive value.

If the Marlins hit on all of those dice rolls, they’re going to win 90-plus games with even indifferent pitching. Of course, the odds of all of those things happening are small, but we’re being optimistic here.

Here’s what I’m getting at: The Marlins have essentially settled on their up-the-middle core. The name recognition isn’t great, and everyone involved has a lot to prove, but the potential is undeniably there. That means the areas the Marlins have to upgrade are in the corners, where power is cheap.

Indeed, that’s where the Marlins made their first, and so far only, offseason move: signing Christopher Morel to a one-year, $2 million contract.

You remember Morel: the exit-velo/bat-speed monster whose quality and direction of contact evince game-breaking power. In a ranking of the 277 hitters who registered 300 or more plate appearances this past season, Morel was 36th (one spot ahead of Raleigh) in HardHit%. He was 23rd (one spot ahead of Stowers) in EV90. Morel not only hits the ball hard, but he also hits it in the right places; 27.2% of his balls in play were pulled and in the air.

But Morel doesn’t make enough contact for it to matter. Out of those 277 hitters, Morel had the second-highest strikeout rate and the second-lowest in-zone contact rate. His chase rate and walk numbers aren’t awful, but they’re average, not elite.

As a result, Morel posted a wRC+ of 90 in 2025; only seven of the top 30 in EV90 failed to produce a wRC+ in the triple digits. The Marlins might recognize some others. Ramírez is one; Jesús Sánchez, whom they traded to Houston at the deadline, is another. That power is clearly tantalizing, but both the Cubs and Rays were unable to get Morel to hit reliably. Perhaps the Marlins, having just gotten Stowers to level up, will have better luck.

But that’s another variable, likely a lower-percentage play than unlocking extra power from Lopez, Edwards, or Hicks.

Here, I come back to 2003. The Marlins caught lightning in a bottle that year, but they were able to capitalize on it because, by signing Pudge, they had a bottle in the first place. I’m not going to insult you by pretending like the Marlins, who as of this writing have the lowest payroll in baseball, were ever a realistic landing spot for someone like Kyle Schwarber or Pete Alonso, though it’s hard to overstate how much one of those guys could’ve revolutionized Miami’s lineup. Nor should we hold our breath waiting for the Marlins to increase their payroll by half in an attempt to sign Kyle Tucker or Bo Bichette.

But what about someone like Ryan O’Hearn? Surely he’d fit within even the Marlins’ modest budget. Why not try to squeeze in on the Astros’ infield logjam and try to pry Isaac Paredes loose, or see how committed the Cardinals are to trading Willson Contreras?

Failing that, Morel could end up being the mirror image of his new team. The Marlins have lots of potential, but it might not matter unless they take some bigger swings.