Following 40-homer season, what happened to Deyvison De Los Santos' power?

[Ely Sussman]

Nearly a month into Triple-A Jacksonville's regular season, De Los Santos has gone deep only once. However, he's still been an effective offensive player overall.

The man who led Minor League Baseball in home runs last season is currently tied for seventh on his own team in that category. It has been a weird start to the 2025 season for Deyvison De Los Santos, though not necessarily a bad one.

De Los Santos was homerless in 17 consecutive games to begin the season. That was the second-longest home run drought of his minor league career, trailing only a 33-gamer in 2021 when he was a teenager making the leap from rookie ball to Low-A. He snapped out of it on April 19, and even that one barely eluded the grasp of the opposing outfielder.

Entering play on Friday, however, Fish On First's seventh-ranked prospect is getting on base at a substantially higher rate than he did when facing Triple-A pitching last year. Accounting for the ultra-hitting-friendly conditions that juiced his numbers during a stint in the Pacific Coast League, De Los Santos is actually a better offensive player in his current form.

• De Los Santos at AAA in 2024 (99 G): .264/.311/.523, 26 HR, 0 SB, 102 wRC+
• De Los Santos at AAA in 2025 (22 G): .305/.363/.416, 1 HR, 3 SB, 118 wRC+

The quality of contact that De Los Santos has been making is still excellent. His 56.4% hard-hit rate is good for 17th out of the 264 players who have at least 50 plate appearances at Triple-A, according to Baseball Savant. He is virtually tied with newly promoted Athletics top prospect Nick Kurtz in that category.

Elevating the ball is important for a below-average runner like De Los Santos and he is continuing to chip away at his career-long ground ball issue. His GB% rate has dropped from 57.0% in 2021 to 54.8% in 2022 to 52.8% in 2023 to 49.6% in 2024 to 41.8% so far in 2025.

Also (and perhaps most importantly), De Los Santos has tweaked his plate approach to be more selective. During his first taste of Triple-A, he swung at 45.6% of pitches outside the strike zone, a chase rate which would've been the second-highest among qualified major leaguers in 2024. That was not going to be sustainable for somebody who is already vulnerable to whiffing on pitches in the zone. So far in 2025, his chase rate is 32.2%—for context, that's in the same ballpark as Otto Lopez and Kyle Stowers.

You might assume that De Los Santos is getting unlucky to have only one home run to this point, but he frankly hasn't been coming close to clearing the fences. While the lineout below would've been gone to other parts of the field, that is the lone exception. All of his other batted balls have had estimated distances of 353 feet or less.

If anything, luck has been on DDLS' side. His batting average on balls in play is a sky-high .444. That will not hold up regardless of how many sharp line drives he produces.

So yeah, it's been a mixed bag for Deyvison De Los Santos. The Marlins will take their time letting the 21-year-old incubate in Jacksonville until he puts it all together. Between Matt Mervis, Eric Wagaman and Agustín Ramírez, first base and designated hitter are occupied at the big league level, anyway.

(As a footnote, De Los Santos has been starting once per series at third base to offer a shred of defensive versatility. He looks like an emergency option there at best due to lack of arm strength, but to his credit, he's been making all of the routine plays.)

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