Marlins near bottom of everybody's 2024 MLB farm system rankings

[Ely Sussman]

For the first time in six-plus years, there seems to be an industry consensus that the Marlins' prospect pipeline is in very bad shape.

It's not exactly breaking news. This has been building for half a year following a season of lousy minor league performances, deflating injuries, substantial "win-now" trades and prospect graduations. We still had to wait for the dawn of Spring Training for reputable national outlets to update their MLB farm system rankings in concert.

The Miami Marlins have one of the worst farm systems in baseball. When that was previously the case (following the 2017 season), new ownership detonated the major league roster to start fresh. This time around, the response has been a front office shake-up. The latter approach won't bear fruit immediately, hence the unsightly rankings below.

Beneath each outlet's 2024 Marlins ranking, I've included the blurbs from their respective articles summarizing the current state of the system.

 

Baseball America staff

• Ranked 27th entering 2024 (ranked 20th entering 2023)

No one doubts Miami’s ability to scout, develop and graduate pitchers, and new additions like Noble Meyer and Thomas White add more firepower. But the system falls off quickly after that and has very little offensive impact talent to speak of, especially considering the rough start to pro ball that 2022 No. 6 pick Jacob Berry has had.

 

Baseball Prospectus prospect staff

• Ranked 28th entering 2024 (ranked 23rd entering 2023)

The Marlins bought at the last deadline, which did weaken the system a bit, but they’ve also dealt with pitcher injuries and have spent significant draft capital on prep arms that will take a while to develop. They should also probably stop immediately trading interesting Day Two draft picks to the Rays every year, that wouldn’t hurt. This is obviously going to be an organization in flux over the next calendar year as new POBO Peter Bendix puts his stamp on things.

 

The Athletic's Keith Law

• Ranked 28th entering 2024 (ranked 21st entering 2023)

The Marlins’ system has been depleted by some trades and some underwhelming drafts, plus some international free agents who’ve stalled out quickly in the low minors despite big tools. They do have pitching on the way, although it’s probably a few years out, while their position-player group is really light. Their draft last year started with two very high-upside high school pitchers, and if both stay healthy this year the top of the system will look quite a bit better.

 

ESPN's Kiley McDaniel

• Ranked 29th entering 2024 (ranked 18th entering 2023)

There have been solid recent graduations in Miami, with Eury Perez, Max Meyer, Braxton Garrett and Edward Cabrera all either in the big league rotation or expected to join soon. I also liked the bold decision Miami made to take the top two prep pitchers in the 2023 draft—Noble Meyer and Thomas White—along with thumpers Kemp Alderman and Brock Vradenburg soon after.

But there have also been some clear negative results in the system as of late. Dax Fulton was progressing well but got his second elbow surgery, Marco Vargas was traded to the Mets for a rental reliever (though the Fish made the playoffs), and there wasn't a notable jump forward in the system with a number of half or full steps back. After coming from the Rays, new President of Baseball Ops Peter Bendix will likely take an infrastructure-and-process oriented view to building things back up and there's a good bit of work to be done.

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[One Regend]

Honestly... none of those talent evaluators are wrong. After Thomas White, our prospect stock fell off a cliff. You can attribute that to bad scouting and a bad development staff that, for some reason, we kept around for 6 years. I'm hoping Peter Bendix, Vinesh Kanthan, and Rachel Balkovec do a better job with those roles than their predecessors did because the job their predecessors did was dreadfully awful. I've got nothing against D. J. Svihlik and Adrian Lorenzo, but they should never be anywhere near a Front Office executive job after what they did to the Marlins.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I wasn't really up to speed on the Marlins system but when I looked at their positional depth a month or so ago... woof.