Ely Sussman

In a three-team, not-yet-official trade on Wednesday, the Miami Marlins sent longtime utility guy Jon Berti to the New York Yankees in exchange for two prospects: Yankees outfielder John Cruz and Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Shane Sasaki. Berti had two years of club control left. Meanwhile, Cruz and Sasaki aren't yet on the 40-man roster. I project Cruz to be assigned to Low-A and Sasaki to Double-A. You can read more about the players involved here. It's shocking timing so close to the start of the season, but putting that aside, how do you think the Marlins did here? Please cast your vote in the poll.

Berti was seemingly a lock to make Miami's Opening Day roster and would have been entering his sixth year in the Marlins organization. Less than 24 hours before their season opener, the Miami Marlins, New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays finalized a trade involving infielder Jon Berti, as first reported by Craig Mish of SportsGrid. In exchange, the Fish received outfielders John Cruz (Yankees) and Shane Sasaki (Rays). Catcher Ben Rortvedt went from New York to Tampa Bay. Berti joined the Marlins as a minor league free agent entering the 2019 season. Outside of a couple injuries, he had been a staple of their roster since the middle of that season. He led the majors with 41 stolen bases in 2022. Then last year, he established new career highs in games played (133), batting average (.294) and home runs (seven) while also making more starts at shortstop than he had in all of his previous MLB seasons combined. Overall, Berti produced 7.0 fWAR in Miami. The 34-year-old Berti was set to earn a salary of $3.625M in 2024 with one more year of arbitration eligibility remaining after that. He clearly had positive trade value and the Marlins used that to slightly deepen their ailing farm system. "You want to take one eye on the future and one eye on the present team at the same time," Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix told the assembled media (including Fish On First's Noah Berger) at LoanDepot Park on Wednesday afternoon. "This trade probably helps us a little bit more in the future, but I'm also optimistic about the younger players that we have here that could step in in the short term." Cruz has played two professional seasons since signing with the Yankees out of the Dominican Republic. He put up great numbers in the Florida Complex League in 2023: .294/.376/.531 slash line (131 wRC+) with 10 homers and nine steals in 48 games. Bendix boasted about Cruz's "interesting combination" of power and contact at such a young age. The 18-year-old will most likely begin the 2024 campaign with Low-A Jupiter and earn a spot on our next FOF Top 30 prospects list update. Sasaki, 23, was drafted and developed by the Rays. He posted a 130 wRC+ at the High-A level last season and his minor league career wRC+ is 132. Bendix describes him as a "well-rounded player." The right-handed-hitting Hawaiian has gotten the majority of his defensive reps in center field. He was left unprotected for the Rule 5 Draft this past offseason, but did not get selected. I project Sasaki to be assigned to Double-A Pensacola. So who fills Berti's spot on the Marlins active roster? He had been expected to spend a lot of time on the left side of the infield spelling Jake Burger and Tim Anderson when needed. The 40-man roster candidates to choose from are Jacob Amaya, Jonah Bride, Xavier Edwards, Victor Mesa Jr. and Dane Myers. Of that bunch, Myers had the most impressive spring training performance. But in the short term, I think the priority will be bringing up somebody with decent defense at third base, which favors Bride. The 40-man is currently at 39 players. View full article

No matter how close it is to the real competition, there's just very little correlation. We get reminded of it year after year after year. It's more so about looking for tangible changes in player skills, approach and athleticism.

Marlins news roundup for 3/27/24 Do you want Miami Marlins news delivered directly to you in the morning? Sign up for our email newsletter! 🔷 There was baseball at LoanDepot Park on Tuesday, an intrasquad scrimmage involving both Marlins big leaguers and minor league backups. Kevin Barral recaps how Max Meyer, Trevor Rogers and Edward Cabrera performed and what they had to say afterwards. 🔷 As I projected, unavailable Marlins right-hander Huascar Brazoban has been placed on the restricted list. Brazoban entered the new year as a probable pick for Miami's major league bullpen, but he is still unable to travel to the United States due to visa issues. The transaction creates a vacant spot on the 40-man roster. 🔷 Miguel Rojas didn't really deny any of the clubhouse anecdotes that Jazz Chisholm Jr. told about him in an interview earlier this month, but he says Chisholm "crossed a line" by attacking his character. Rojas is disappointed that Chisholm did not respect his veteran teammates. Rojas doesn't sound optimistic about them mending fences in the future: "I'm not up to having a person in my life that thinks that I'm a bad person or a piece of s***." 🔷 Louis Addeo-Weiss and Kevin Barral put the lefty-heavy Marlins starting rotation in historical context. 🔷 I provided Marlins insight for The Good Phight's 2024 NL East preview. It includes my takes on Jazz Chisholm Jr., Sixto Sánchez, payroll and more. 🔷 On Miami Mic'd Up with Jeremy Taché (episode embedded below), Peter Bendix justified the Marlins' signing of Tim Anderson despite severe struggles in 2023: "You can find lots of examples of players who have five, six, seven really good years in a row and then a bad year, and you can say, 'Okay, what happened to those guys the following year (this year for us)?' A lot of those guys bounced back! A lot of them bounced back to very similar levels as before. And the key thing that those guys had in common was, number one, they're not that old, they're not 37-38 years old, and number two, there were some health concerns that might have contributed to the poor season and there's reason to believe those are behind him. That is no guarantee, but you watched him during spring training. You see that he's moving really, really well, really fluidly. Some of the things that were hampering him that frankly he played through that other players probably wouldn't have played through, which in my opinion speaks very positively about Tim, but probably brought down his numbers in a way last year that might not be entirely fair." 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, Jordan Montgomery (1/$25M) signed with the Diamondbacks. Even with an easily attainable vesting option for 2025, it is a shockingly inexpensive deal for one of the best players in this past offseason's free agent class. Plucked from the Marlins farm system via the Rule 5 Draft, Nasim Nuñez has made the Nationals' Opening Day roster. It would be a stretch to say Nuñez "earned" the spot—he had a 2 wRC+ in spring training games—but the Nats will test him in regular season action before they consider returning him to Miami. 🔷 Follow along with Noah Berger (@NoahBergerMedia) for live coverage of today's team workout. Marlins podcast episodes View full article

Yes. I can sorta see what Jazz was thinking, being a year removed from his dark times, recognizing that he's in a better place now and being eager to express that. But a more mature person vents like that among family and friends instead of going in front of a microphone to embarrass and burn bridges.

We tweet Miami Marlins GIFs from the @FishOnFirst account on a daily basis—highlights, celebrations, funny reactions, etc. However, the app does not allow you to directly download these GIFs for unlimited personal use. That is where the GIF Database comes in! Exclusively for SuperSubs, I curate a series of Google Drive folders holding my best GIFs (more than 500 in total entering the 2026 regular season). Save your faves and use them to express yourself online. Here are a few free examples of recently created GIFs. To access the rest, become a SuperSub and click the link below... View full article

That was before his "captaincy" began to be fair, but I agree it was one of the more distinct aspects of his Marlins tenure haha.

On The Chris Rose Rotation, Miguel Rojas explains why Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s recent comments about him crossed a line. View full video

On The Chris Rose Rotation, Rojas explained why he and other Marlins veterans felt they had a responsibility to enforce the team's rules inside the clubhouse. He has no interest in reconciling with Chisholm. Jazz Chisholm Jr. gave us his side of the story. Now, Miguel Rojas has responded. Co-hosting Tuesday's episode of The Chris Rose Rotation, the former Miami Marlins shortstop spent about 16 minutes discussing MLB clubhouse dynamics in light of Chisholm repeatedly bashing him on The Pivot podcast last week. "Whatever you want to say about me as a player...you can have that opinion," Rojas said. "But you saying that I'm a 'bad person' when you don't even know me, when you don't even know where I come from, you're not even part of what's close to me or have the opportunity to sit down with me and getting to know me as a person, that's kinda what bothers me." "There's things that never should leave a clubhouse," Rojas continued. "I'm not expecting everybody to like me and I don't like everybody, but that doesn't mean I can go out there and tell everybody what's happening in the clubhouse." To recap, Chisholm and Rojas spent parts of three seasons together as Marlins teammates (2020-22). Chisholm told The Pivot that those were "the worst three years of probably my life" largely because of how "our captain" (referring to Rojas) and other veteran players treated him. During the 2022 season (Rojas' final one in Miami), the Marlins held an awkward team meeting after veteran players complained to manager Don Mattingly about how Jazz was violating the team's dress code and other off-the-field rules. From his perspective, it seemed as though "they wanted to put me in a box and it wasn't happening cuz I'm not ever gonna be put in a box." Chisholm felt alienated by his teammates. "I felt like I was at that stage of being a kid again when I was just like, 'Nobody wanna hang with me but my family,'" he recalled. "When you come into a place, there's rules in place and someone is gonna keep you accountable," Rojas explained. "That's all that the vets were trying to do: keeping people accountable for their actions because we have rules in place." As I had guessed initially, Rojas confirms that Jesús Sánchez was the player who Marlins vets reprimanded for doing the "Soto Shuffle" in the batter's box. "You're not f***ing Juan Soto," Chisholm remembers them saying. "You shouldn't be doing that." Rojas disputes that. He claims their message to Sánchez was: "Do whatever you want to do. We're just telling you that it's gonna be better if you just take care of your business and be yourself and go out there and focus on what you need to focus on, which is playing baseball and performing." Is there any chance that Chisholm and Rojas can patch things up? Unlikely. "I'm not up to having a person in my life that thinks that I'm a bad person or a piece of ****," Rojas said. The full conversation between Rojas and Chris Rose is embedded below. View full article

Marlins news roundup for 3/26/24 Do you want Miami Marlins news delivered directly to you in the morning? Sign up for our email newsletter! 🔷 After wearing jersey No. 55 during his rookie season as Marlins manager, Skip Schumaker has switched to No. 45 to honor his late father, Wayne. In a corresponding move, Sixto Sánchez has switched from No. 45 to No. 18. 🔷 On Monday's Small Pod, I shared my final Opening Day roster projection. Barring last-minute injuries, 23 of the 26 spots are firmly locked up. The only remaining questions are surrounding middle relief where it appears to be four right-handers (Declan Cronin, Vladimir Gutierrez, Bryan Hoeing and Anthony Maldonado) for three jobs. Tuesday's Small Pod—hosted by Daniel Rodriguez—is embedded below. 🔷 This afternoon at LoanDepot Park, the Marlins will play an intrasquad scrimmage (open to the media, but not fans). Rehabbing from a shoulder impingement, Edward Cabrera is scheduled to face live batters for the first time in three weeks. 🔷 Hector Rodriguez's latest 2024 MLB Draft profile focuses on prep LHP Cam Caminiti. 🔷 Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald summarizes the Marlins' ballpark promotions and giveaways for the 2024 season. 🔷 The Pensacola Blue Wahoos hired recently retired infielder Cobie Fletcher-Vance as a business operations resident. 🔷 At No. 84, RHP Noble Meyer is the lone Marlin included on Just Baseball's Top 100 prospects list. 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, in a lengthy statement, Shohei Ohtani denied ever betting on sports, pinning all wrongdoing on former translator Ippei Mizuhara. 🔷 By the time you're reading this, the latest episode of The Chris Rose Rotation should be live. Miguel Rojas is expected to respond to Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s comments about Miami's toxic clubhouse culture. I'll post a separate article later about Rojas' side of the story. Marlins podcast episodes View full article

Big Fish Small Pod for Monday, March 25, 2024 Ely Sussman discusses which 26 players he expects to be included on the Miami Marlins' active roster to begin the regular season. Find Big Fish Small Pod on the Fish On First YouTube channel, our new-look Apple Podcasts channel and wherever else you get your pods. FOF's audio programming also includes The Offishial Show, Fish Unfiltered, Swimming Upstream and more. The Fish On First podcast is now being presented by MPT College Consulting! They pride themselves on helping clients navigate the college application process. This includes preparation for standardized testing, guidance through high school, assistance with essays and applications, and choosing the right college. Visit them today at mptcollegeconsulting.com to learn more about their services and schedule a free consultation. Follow Ely (@RealEly) and Fish On First (@FishOnFirst) on Twitter. Join the Marlins Discord server! Complete Miami Marlins coverage here at FishOnFirst.com. Best of the FOF podcast {playlist} View full article

Marlins news roundup for 3/25/24 Do you want Miami Marlins news delivered directly to you in the morning? Sign up for our email newsletter! 🔷 On Sunday, the Marlins concluded their 2024 Grapefruit League schedule with a 5-1 win against the New York Mets. Nick Gordon and Jesús Sánchez drove in two runs apiece. Two more scoreless innings of relief for Sixto Sánchez. The pitching staff totaled 14 strikeouts, one shy of their single-game best this spring. 🔷 Luis Arraez ended the spring on a 10-game hitting streak and was the Marlins' leader in hits (17) and total bases (26). Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Dane Myers each had three home runs. George Soriano was nearly flawless across seven appearances (9.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K). Grapefruit League and Cactus League combined, the Marlins ranked last among all MLB teams in OPS (.662) and runs scored per game (3.70). 🔷 Max Meyer enters the regular season as Miami's No. 5 starter. I frankly have no clue what to expect from him. This spring, he looked very similar to the pitcher we saw in 2022, the one who had little else to prove in the minors, but lacks exceptional traits outside of his slider and athleticism. 🔷 The latest from our Marlins injury/rehab tracker: Braxton Garrett and Edward Cabrera are both scheduled to face live batters this week, while Eury Pérez has resumed playing catch after his elbow inflammation scare. If all goes well for Garrett on Thursday, I could see him joining Triple-A Jacksonville for a rehab assignment next week. Minor league affiliates have begun placing players on the 60-day IL. LHP Dax Fulton (elbow surgery) is the most notable Marlins prospect who's been put on there so far. 🔷 Where are they now? With Opening Day fast approaching, I count seven members of the 2023 Marlins who remain unsigned in free agency. 🔷 Hector Rodriguez annually publishes a series of MLB Draft prospect profiles for Fish On First. First up in the 2024 draft class: Cal catcher Caleb Lomavita. 🔷 A panel of MLB.com "experts" voted Luis Arraez as their favorite to repeat as NL batting champ. 🔷 MLB.com's Christina De Nicola predicts that Sixto Sánchez and Tim Anderson will both be candidates for the Comeback Player of the Year award. 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, the Rockies signed Ezequiel Tovar to a seven-year, $63.5M contract extension and the Phillies extended Matt Strahm through 2025 with a vesting option for 2026. View full article

Well you're right about that last part: Sixto will be appointment viewing as long as he's effective. That won't dictate how the baseball decision-makers use him, of course.

I'm perplexed by the total lack of contract extensions. Bendix saw for himself with the Rays how vital it is to extend club control over certain players during a particular window in anticipation of those players sustaining their success or continuing to improve. For him to not reach deals with anybody on this roster either speaks to budget restrictions or his lack of faith in them. Between eliminating the Short-Season A level of the minors and cutting the draft from 40 rounds to 20, Major League Baseball has taken steps to discourage American player participation. Shortsighted decision-making.

The front office made up their minds a while ago, unfortunately. If they were ready to move on from Avi, would've happened before spring training. Once they brought him to camp, they were clearly determined to give him a third chance to turn things around.

Player status updates, insightful stats and more information to fully equip you for today's Marlins game. Here are the latest Miami Marlins game notes, produced by the Marlins communications department and relayed to our loyal SuperSubs... View full article