Main takeaways from 2024 Miami Marlins ZiPS projections

Every year, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projection system uses data and past comps to project how individual players will perform. The accuracy of his projections obviously isn't perfect, but has been very good as of late.

What does ZiPS have to say about 2024 Marlins players? Let's break it down.

You can read Szymborski's original article about it and use these sortable tables.

Thank you to the guys at the Just Baseball Show for inspiring this idea. You can check out their series of episodes reacting to ZiPS projections along with the rest of their great content on all podcast platforms.

Position Players

Right off the bat, Luis Arraez is projected to slash .316/.369/.418 with seven home runs, 59 RBIs and a 116 OPS+. In 2023, Arraez slashed .354/.393/.469/.861 with 10 home runs, 69 RBIs and a 132 wRC+.

Although this does seem like a down year compared to what the Venezuelan second baseman did last season, ZiPS takes your whole career into account, but more specifically, the last three years. In 2022, prior to Arraez arrival in Miami, he slashed .316/.375/.420/.795 with eight home runs, 49 RBIs and a 131 wRC+.

Although right now it makes sense to take the over on the ZiPS projection, it shouldn’t come to anyone as a surprise the projection placed on the Marlins second baseman.

In 2023, Jazz Chisholm Jr. slashed .250/.304/.457 with 19 home runs, 51 RBIs and a 103 wRC+. In 2024, ZiPS projected Chisholm to slash .249/.313/.451 with 19 home runs, 61 RBIs and a 107 OPS+. These projections line up with his usual career norms. To see different results, it will take the Marlins center fielder to play over 100 games in a season, which is where different projections may be seen in 2025. At least an uptick in most numbers. At the moment, it is hard to disagree with the projection.

Defensively, ZiPS has Chisholm continuing to improve at center field with a plus-four DEF. In 2023, he ranked in the 87th percentile of outs above average, which was one of the best in baseball along with an arm strength in the 80th percentile. Where the metrics didn’t do him any favors, it was in DRS, where he was at minus-nine, but that should improve.

ZiPS currently projects Jake Burger to once again have a strong season and continue his 2023 success by slashing .252/.308/.483 with 27 home runs, 74 RBIs and a 113 OPS+. Although projections show that Burger won’t continue to be the contact hitter that he was when arriving in South Florida, he will continue to show off his plus power and in fact lead the team in home runs. Unfortunately, ZiPS doesn’t see a world where Burger strikes out at a 21.7% like he did with the Marlins. It believes that Burger will go back to his career norms and strikeout 140 times, which would lead the team this upcoming season.

Despite a solid 2023 season, ZiPS projects Jesús Sánchez to have a similar 2024 season. Sánchez came onto the scene in 2020 where he saw limited game action. In 2021, Sánchez had a 111 wRC+ with 14 home runs, but the strikeout percentage was high. 2022 was an up-and-down season for Sánchez, but still put up a 109 wRC+ and had a 14 homer season. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that with the lack of overall years, ZiPS thinks that Sánchez will have a repeat year with some improvements. He is projected to slash .252/.322/.443 with 18 home runs, 61 RBIs and a 108 OPS+.

Along with a strong offensive season, Sánchez is projected to have a positive defensive season with plus-three DEF. If Sánchez can cut down on the strikeout percentage just a bit more into the 20-21% range, then it is possible that we see an overall better approach along with more success from the projected right fielder in 2024.

If there is one player that ZiPS is high on (and rightfully so), it is Xavier Edwards who they have fourth on the team in WAR at 2.0. After slashing .351/.429/.457 with seven home runs, 47 RBIs and a 130 wRC+ at the AAA level, Edwards was called up to the big leagues where he slashed .295/.329/.333 with three RBIs. It does seem like ZiPS believes that Edwards will be earning plenty of playing time, especially given that Miami has yet to sign a shortstop, so having him play games at short will be something that may have played a factor.

The highest-rated minor leaguer by ZiPS is Jake Thompson who ended the 2023 season with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. ZiPS has him slashing .248/.326/.414 with 12 home runs, 51 RBIs and a 102 OPS+. He is projected to be a 1.3 WAR player this upcoming season. Defensively is where I begin to have doubts with Thompson, but not ZiPS, projecting him at plus-four DEF. So far in the minors, Thompson has seen action in the corner outfield spots along with first base.

Pitchers

One of the more interesting projections on the starting pitching side of things is Braxton Garrett who is projected to have a 4.06 ERA, 4.10 FIP, 21.5% K in 136.0 IP. What fascinates me the most about the ZiPS projection for Garrett is the comparison section.

The comparison that I am a fan of the most is the first one, which is José Quintana. Below are Quintana’s first three seasons in the major leagues compared to Garrett’s career up to this point (2020-2023) and you can see that Quintana leads in most categories, but primarily due to more overall games played in. Despite leading in most stats, Garrett isn’t too far off in ERA, ERA+ and actually strikes out hitters at a higher rate, but as expected less walks given less games. Garrett is just now starting to ramp up in terms of games played, so maybe doing this comparison in a couple years, we will have a lot more similarities than the ones we have now.

Eury Pérez is coming off of a strong rookie campaign where he ended up throwing over 100 innings between the major and minor leagues. In 2024, ZiPS projected the young Dominican to throw 124.0 innings and have a 3.63 ERA, 3.71 FIP and 26.4 K%.

The comparisons that ZiPS gives Pérez are Denny McLain, Dennis Eckersley and José Fernández. Although Pérez didn’t have the same rookie years that Eckersley and Fernández had, it gives you a good look at what players who were similar to Pérez in their age-20 season. Certainly a good amount of names to have, especially Fernández, a former Marlin himself who won the NL Rookie of the Year that season.

It is very likely that Jesús Luzardo will be the Miami Marlins Opening Day starter in 2024. ZiPS projects that the Marlins number one starter will have a 3.88 ERA, 3.85 FIP, 26.8% in 153 ⅓ innings pitched.

What stands out not only about Luzardo, but the remaining of this Marlins rotation is how low ZiPS has them at innings pitched after coming off of career highs in that category, but you look back even further, Luzardo and Garrett haven’t seen as much action as they did in 2023, which is why some of these comps see the compared player have more overall stats.

When it comes to both Luzardo and Pérez, I would take the under on the ERA and expect Luzardo to pitch over that 153 ⅓ innings marker that they have him set at, which in the 2025 ZiPS projections, should increase the innings count.

With Pérez, it is hard to know what will be the plan. Although we do know he will pitch over his 2023 total, we don’t know by how much more he will beat that.

ZiPS does project Edward Cabrera to once again struggle in 2024, posting a 4.41 ERA, 4.53 FIP, 23.8% K, 10.9% BB in 112 ⅓ innings pitched. These projected numbers should come to no surprise given his 2023 struggles and late struggles in the 2022 season.

Trevor Rogers, who only saw action in four games last year is set to pitch just over 100 innings according to ZiPS. He is projected to have a 4.06 ERA, 3.91 FIP, 23.7% K, 7.8% BB in 102.0 IP. These stats shouldn’t come as a surprise given that Rogers threw 107 innings in 2022 and 18 innings in 2023. He has only surpassed 110 innings once, which was in 2021 where he was the runner up for the NL Rookie of the Year.

Despite heavily struggling in the second half of the season, ZiPS thinks A.J. Puk will have a 114 ERA+ (100 league average). What will be interesting is seeing how different these stats will be if he does end up going into that swingman-type role, taking on more innings of work.

ZiPS projects minor leaguer Luis Palacios to be the best minor league pitcher for the Marlins, despite being projected to have a 4.69 ERA, 4.65 FIP, 13.7% K, 4.7% BB, 90 ERA+, but they have him giving Miami length with 128 ⅔ innings pitched.

At the end of the day, there are always players who will defy their projections, but with all the factors that ZiPS takes into consideration, these numbers can tip us off about guys who are likely to trend in a positive or negative direction.