Top of the Order: Taking Stock of the 2025 Marlins
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
By now, you’re surely aware that the Marlins were busy, to say the least, ahead of last week’s trade deadline. Miami dealt 10 players — Jazz Chisholm Jr., Josh Bell, Bryan De La Cruz, Trevor Rogers, Tanner Scott, Bryan Hoeing, A.J. Puk, JT Chargois, Huascar Brazobán, and let’s not forget Luis Arraez, who was traded in early May — to teams looking to make the postseason, an admirable goal that the 2024 Marlins do not share. But that doesn’t mean the players who remain with Miami have nothing to play for the rest of the way. President of Baseball Operations Peter Bendix is in full evaluation mode, with spots aplenty up for grabs in 2025. That might even include manager Skip Schumaker, who is in his lame duck year and could decide to skip out of town for a job — wait for it — skippering a better team next season.
Since the Marlins are looking ahead to next season, we’ll do the same thing here today. Let’s take stock of the players currently vying for spots on next year’s Opening Day roster.
Position Players
Even before all the trades, the Marlins lineup was anemic, ranking second-worst by wRC+ from the beginning of the season through July 26, the day before Chisholm was traded to the Yankees.
With the team doing so poorly in the aggregate, it’s unsurprising that there have been few individual bright spots. Looking around the diamond, the only positions that look pretty locked in for next year are shortstop, one of the corner infield spots, and one of the corner outfield spots. Xavier Edwards, who has excelled at short since Miami released Tim Anderson at the end of June, is batting .383/.456/.470 (163 wRC+) to go along with 12 stolen bases for the season. Slugger Jake Burger rebounded from a horrid start to put up a 166 wRC+ in July. He’s continued that production so far in August, and he’s currently bouncing between DH, first, and third. Lastly, Jesús Sánchez’s raw power remains tantalizing, but he’s always hovered between 10 points (in either direction) of being league average by wRC+. Still, there’s no reason not to give him more run as long as he’s on the squad.
As for the other spots, well, there are plenty of contenders! The quality of the personnel is up for debate, but the quantity is indisputable. Here are all the position players auditioning for roles on the 2025 roster, either down the stretch or come spring training:
- Catchers Nick Fortes, Ali Sánchez, Jhonny Pereda, and Agustin Ramirez
- Infielders Jonah Bride, Emmanuel Rivera, Tristan Gray, Troy Johnston, and Deyvison De Los Santos
- Outfielders Kyle Stowers, Cristian Pache, Dane Myers, Forrest Wall, Derek Hill, Victor Mesa, and Griffin Conine
- Infielder/outfielders Otto Lopez, Vidal Bruján, David Hensley, Connor Norby, Graham Pauley, and Javier Sanoja
That doesn’t even include any future trade acquisitions or buy-low free agent signings the Marlins could make during the offseason. Either way, they’ll have plenty of position players to choose from next season.
Starting Pitchers
Assuming the Marlins don’t make any more trades between now and Opening Day, this is the most straightforward group. Sandy Alcantara will be about 16 months removed from his Tommy John surgery when the 2025 season begins, so he should be good to go. He’ll definitely be joined by Jesús Luzardo, with only a small handful of arms fighting for the final three rotation spots, which will become two spots once Eury Pérez returns from his own Tommy John surgery later in the year.
The four big names in contention are healthy hurlers Max Meyer and Edward Cabrera, as well as the currently injured Braxton Garrett and Ryan Weathers. Weathers is out with a finger strain that will certainly be cleared up by next season, but he only just began playing catch late last month, leaving his status for the rest of this season unclear. Garrett’s flexor strain is an even scarier injury, but he should be OK for 2025 if his arm doesn’t require any surgical intervention.
With Alcantara’s innings perhaps being managed coming off of surgery, it’s possible that the Marlins could go with a six-man rotation. If that’s what they decide to do, recent trade acquisitions Adam Mazur and Robby Snelling, as well as Darren McCaughan, likely would be the running for that sixth spot.
Relief Pitchers
As with any team, the bullpen is going to have the most players contending for spots on next year’s roster. If they are still members of the organization on Opening Day, Calvin Faucher, Anthony Bender, Andrew Nardi, and Declan Cronin will have their spots locked in, but considering all four were bandied about as trade options prior to the deadline, I’d be surprised if all of them started spring training as members of Marlins.
Beyond those four, there’s an absolute cavalry of arms currently on the big-league roster, out hurt, or down on the farm. A loser of the rotation battle could find himself in the bullpen as well, leaving perhaps dozens of pitchers competing for a precious few spots once the team adds to the roster via further non-roster invites, waiver claims, or, yes, trades. In looking for the next Scott — basically, a guy who is acquired for relatively little and then turns into a Dude — Bendix surely will cast a wide net.
In looking ahead to 2025, there are a couple of key caveats to keep in mind. As mentioned before, there will be other trades; several of the players I listed above will be on other teams come February. There will also, of course, be injuries, opening even more spots.
Lastly, there will be a lot of procedural moves removing players from contention for roster spots before the offseason even begins in earnest. The 60-day IL is not usable during the offseason, and the Marlins currently have seven players on it. That means that between now and the onset of the offseason, Miami will have to free up seven 40-man spots, and because the team has no pending free agents to clear space, the organization will have to designate seven players for assignment. Some of those players will clear waivers and be invited to spring training with a chance to earn their spots back, but there will also be some who get claimed by other clubs or are outrighted to the minors and then exercise their right to free agency — which is an option for outrighted players with three-plus years of service time, those who have been outrighted previously, or both. All of this is to say that for as much as the Marlins’ roster has changed from Opening Day to now, there will be even more roster turnover between now and the start of the 2025 season.
Excellent starting pitching and atrocious elsewhere. Seems like a recipe for trying to sell high on all the starters as soon as their value is restored
I think it might take a year or two for Alcantara and Perez to reestablish full value. Deadline 2026 seems like a more reasonable target than deadline 2025.
And who knows, maybe the Marlins will even be respectable by then. It’s a bit of a long shot, and they still might deal them, but if they can hack together some platoons they could play .500 ball then. Not likely but it will give them some options of holding if teams are still prospect hugging.
I’m not sure a team with close to zero major league assets of significant value has ever turned things around in two years. In the rare case they do, it helps to have ownership that isn’t incredibly cheap and a good farm system. Miami has neither.
With the Nats showing promise, they’re also in a division with four other teams that look like they will be competitive for the next few years. The Marlins are in deep doo doo.
Yeah, I don’t think the Marlins have much hope right now. Outside of Javier Sanoja (who looks super-intriguing with his increased pull ability and Kwan-like contact and walk numbers) and Connor Norby, the position player prospect chest is absent talent for the next while. Banfield and Mesa both look bad in AAA, though Mesa’s defense might make him playable.
On top of that, Jake Burger is utterly incapable of taking walks. He chases absolutely everything in the shadow zone of the plate, to a silly degree. Low and away especially is a nightmare for him. If he’s your best hitter, you’re never going to have a consistent offense because he himself is incapable of consistency. He should really work with, say, Carlos Santana or someone over the offseason, to see if he can train himself to leave certain pitches alone. Might also work better in LF than the infield, as he’s a good straight-line runner but has minimal agility.
In that case, selling is even easier! But I think we’re underestimating how good an Alcantara-Perez-Meyer-Garrett starting group will be, with a lot of other pitchers who will be in the upper minors or maybe even established themselves as major leaguers by that point. It’s not super hard to turn the worst offense in the league into, say, the 22nd best offense with some aggressive platooning. It’s getting beyond that point which requires much more aggressive investment.
A magical, hard-to-believe outcome for their starting staff could make them what, a little better than average? Alcantara is traded before this group could possibly be a part of a winning team.
I think it’s possible that Perez and Alcantara could put up 3-win seasons in 2026, and that Meyer and Garrett could put up 2-win seasons that same year. I don’t think that’s too far out there. I think that depending on what they can dig up, they could hack their way to having a team-wide wRC+ of 90 with a lot of platooning. They have a lot of power arms that would be good in the bullpen. And I think that team would be merely “medicore” rather than “embarrassing.”
Of course they could all stay hurt or come back and be bad and then they’d still be awful, but I see the possibility of them being close to .500 at the trade deadline in 2026.
I agree on the capabilities of that rotation. Very strong and deep if healthy.
This. Somehow cobble together a league average offense and d and they’ll win a bunch of games.
In the lineup, Xavier Edwards’ hot start has him looking pretty good. Burger and Sanchez have some potential. Other than that, pretty thin though. Stowers and Norby aren’t rock stars, but they could turn out to be something.
I think it’s inaccurate to say the Marlins have no assets on the pitching staff, though. A year from now they will have a decent amount of pitching talent.
Right now there’s little value there. Injury has a lot to do with it, but those injuries exist. Also, I said “close to zero,” not “zero” 🤓