Ely Sussman

With several Marlins starting pitchers suffering injuries before the 2024 season has even begun, Craig Mish joins Isaac Azout and Ely Sussman to discuss the possibility of signing polarizing free agent Trevor Bauer. View full video

Marlins news roundup for 3/21/24 Fish On First is providing extensive coverage on location throughout Marlins spring training. Click here to keep up with our latest updates. 🔷 On Wednesday, Jonah Bride (home run) and Troy Johnston (double) had the Marlins' only extra-base hits. Sixto Sánchez threw yet another scoreless inning, this time with only two days' rest in between outings. The Marlins lost to the Mets, 6-3, ensuring they'll finish with a sub-.500 record in Grapefruit League play. 🔷 The Marlins have designated sections 201-204 of LoanDepot Park as all-you-can-eat seats. Starting at $52 per person (I'm already seeing some weekend games at $71/person and even $81/person), fans can get unlimited access to the Caliente Grill concession stand. Alcoholic drinks are not included in the promotion. Sub-optimal seat location, too—those sections are in foul territory deep down the right-field line. I'll be curious to see if anybody actually makes a habit of buying these seats on a consistent basis. It feels more like a try-it-once novelty. 🔷 The Marlins also announced their minor league coordinators for the 2024 season. Former hitting coach Matt Snyder has transitioned to the role of hitting coordinator while Driveline Baseball trainer Maxx Garrett has been hired as a hitting and and catching coordinator. Still awaiting full details about MiLB coaching staffs. 🔷 Ryan Weathers defeated his boss, Peter Bendix, to win the Marlins' annual ping pong tournament. Garrett Hampson won it in 2023. Luis Arraez, Braxton Garrett, Vladimir Gutierrez and Max Meyer also made deep tourney runs this year, per Noah Berger. 🔷 He is Luis Arraez's "brother," Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s "best friend" and Skip Schumaker's Swiss army knife. Our intern, Nate Karzmer, wrote about Nick Gordon. 🔷 Alex Carver and Kevin Barral joined forces to highlight eight in-house options to fill the voids in the Marlins' season-opening starting rotation. 🔷 Congrats to our newest Marlins Jeopardy champion, Ethan Eibe! Ethan edged out our own Isaac Azout by a single point (8,001 to 8,000). This contest was particularly difficult. FOF LIVE is presented by Berger & Hicks. If you’ve been injured as a result of somebody else’s negligence, give them a call at (305) 670-7050. 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, Michael Lorenzen (1/$4.5M) signed with the Rangers. Regardless of how severe Eury Pérez's injury proves to be, it's hard to justify the Marlins passing on Lorenzen at the price considering he threw 153 innings with a 105 ERA+ last season. The Dodgers fired Shohei Ohtani's popular interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, in connection with alleged theft and illegal gambling. Giancarlo Stanton had a three-homer game. He homered only once in his 11 previous spring training games. Marlins podcast episodes View full article

Offishial News for 10/10/24 On Wednesday in the desert, two more Marlins made their Arizona Fall League debuts. LHP Patrick Monteverde (3.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 49 pitches/30 strikes) relied on pitching to contact and Jay Beshears went 0-for-3 with a walk while starting at third base. LF Kemp Alderman homered for the second consecutive day and CF Andrew Pintar went 1-for-4 with a walk. The Peoria Javelinas won, 5-3. Jesse Borek of MLB Pipeline spoke to Alderman about postponing his wedding to participate in the AFL and making "a conscientious effort" to drive balls to right-center field instead of to his pull side (left field). Both of Alderman's long balls this week having gone out the other way. Here's more Marlins news and content: 🔷 Kevin Barral wrote about shadowy Marlins minority owner David Ott. 🔷 Join us for a new edition of Marlins Jeopardy tonight at 6:00 p.m. ET on YouTube/Twitter/Facebook. Special guest: Kyle Sielaff. Special format: trivia focused entirely on the 2024 Marlins season. 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, the Tigers, Mets, Yankees and Dodgers won their respective ALDS/NLDS games. Francisco Lindor's grand slam accounted for all of the Mets' scoring as they eliminated the favored Phils, who won only one postseason game coming off their best regular season since 2011. Giancarlo Stanton delivered three of his team's four hits, including a game-winning solo home run in the eighth inning, his 12th homer in 30 career postseason games. The Tigers and Dodgers both shut out their opponents without using conventional starting pitchers. The roof of Tropicana Field was severely damaged by Hurricane Milton. 🔷 Today's MLB postseason schedule: Cleveland Guardians vs. Detroit Tigers, 6:08 p.m. ET (ALDS Game 4) New York Yankees vs. Kansas City Royals, 8:08 p.m. ET (ALDS Game 4) View full article

A reasonable take! (if this implies money and a roster spot being spent on a productive corner OF/DH instead of Anderson)

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

On The Pivot podcast, Jazz Chisholm Jr. explains what happened when veteran Marlins players called for a meeting regarding his conduct and attire. View full video

In a lengthy interview, Chisholm tells The Pivot about how the first few seasons of his Marlins career were the worst years of his life due to tension between he and his older teammates, including veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas. There is a lot to unpack from Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s 82-minute interview on The Pivot podcast, which was released on Tuesday. He covered various aspects of his personal life and professional journey. What I found most relevant to the Fish On First audience was his recollection of his first three seasons as a Miami Marlins major leaguer (2020-2022). "My first three years in the big leagues were the worst three years of probably my life," Chisholm said. "Outside of baseball was great, but playing baseball, which that was the thing that really I loved doing more than anything else, was the worst. I got to where I wanted to get to at that point—not to the level of it yet, but I got to the big leagues—and I hate it." Although Chisholm withheld the names of his problematic ex-teammates, he didn't go out of the way to conceal their identities. Repeatedly, he spoke disparaging about the "team captain" from that era of Marlins baseball. As anybody who followed the Fish during those seasons is aware, that was Miguel Rojas, the longtime Marlins shortstop who was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023. "Our team captain tried to get me out of here," Chisholm insists. "My team captain would come and tell me, 'Bro you're the best on the team, bro. Keep on going, bro. You're gonna be great. You're gonna lead us one day.' But then the next two seconds, he's in (manager Don Mattingly's) office telling the manager something, and then the manager coming and telling me, 'Bro, this is what your team captain said.' "Our manager doesn't play that. He didn't play that B.S. garbage. The last year that I got through all that stuff, we had a team meeting and he shut it all down." Ah yes, the infamous Marlins team meeting of June 2022. Multiple reports at the time described it as a veteran-led airing of grievances regarding Chisholm's conduct. He confirms that in here. "It was nothing to do with baseball at all," Chisholm says. "That's what made it so wild to me—we're having a whole team meeting with guys who I don't even talk to off the field, so why are we having an off-the-field team meeting when he play baseball?" "They wanted to put me in the box," Chisholm continued, "and it wasn't happening cuz I'm not ever gonna be put in a box." That included how he was dressing while coming to the ballpark and boarding flights. Additionally, Chisholm vented about being the victim of hazing. He describes an incident where a veteran player (not necessarily Rojas) damaged his cleats, poured milk in them and threw them in the trash, cleats that he personally designed. He insinuated that when playing shortstop in place of an injured Rojas, first baseman Jesús Aguilar didn't always make his best effort to pick Chisholm's throws out of the dirt, negatively impacting Chisholm's defensive stats and reputation. The Marlins have since converted Chisholm into a center fielder. There was another time when multiple vets reprimanded a recent call-up for mimicking Juan Soto's "Soto Shuffle" in the batter's box. I believe the young hitter in question was Jesús Sánchez and that the incident occurred in 2021, though the details that Chisholm provides make it difficult to fully verify that. At least on the position player side, the Marlins have overhauled their roster recently. Of the seven guys who played the most games for the 2022 team, five have since gone elsewhere. Don Mattingly also parted ways with the organization and was replaced by Skip Schumaker. "We got a new manager who switched the whole thing up," Chisholm says. "He changed the whole culture...He showed me that in baseball, when you're together, you really are unstoppable." Chisholm pointed to Luis Arraez, Josh Bell, Tim Anderson and his "best friend" Nick Gordon as current teammates who make him feel more comfortable in the clubhouse. He says he's even enjoying spring training more than usual. For what little it's worth, with a major boost from Tuesday's two-homer performance, he has posted an incredible .364/.417/.697 slash line in Grapefruit League play. The full YouTube version of the podcast is embedded above, or you can find The Pivot wherever else you normally get your pods. View full article

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

Marlins news roundup for 3/19/24 Fish On First is providing extensive coverage on location throughout Marlins spring training. Click here to keep up with our latest updates. 🔷 On Monday, Jake Burger and Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit back-to-back jacks for their first home runs of the spring. Red-hot Dane Myers went deep himself with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, taking a well-located, 2-2 slider the other way. Mychal Givens tossed a scoreless inning. The Marlins won, 6-5. 🔷 The Marlins reassigned non-roster invitees C Will Banfield, INF Tristan Gray, INF/OF Javier Sanoja and LHP Devin Smeltzer to minor league camp. High likelihood that we will see Banfield and Gray in Miami at some point during the regular season. 🔷 Griffin Conine (first team), Yiddi Cappe (second team) and Thomas White (second team) were named to the inaugural All-Spring Breakout Team. 🔷 Baseball America's latest 2024 MLB mock draft has the Marlins selecting Florida State third baseman Cam Smith with the 16th overall pick. Through 18 games played this season, Smith is slashing .487/.556/.782. 🔷 Today's games: Marlins (RHP Yonny Chirinos) vs. Cardinals (RHP Kyle Gibson) at 1:05 p.m. and Marlins (LHP A.J. Puk) vs. Astros (RHP Brandon Bielak) at 6:05 p.m. No television coverage for either. 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, Blake Snell (2/$62M) finally signed with the Giants. 🔷 Marlins Jeopardy returns on Wednesday night! As always, we want to feature your audience questions. Submit clever trivia here. 🔷 Remember to bookmark the Fish On First injury/rehab tracker to stay updated on how Marlins players are progressing. View full article

Highlights of the performances that earned Griffin Conine (first team), Yiddi Cappe (second team) and Thomas White (second team) selections to the inaugural All-Spring Breakout Team. View full video

One of the most impressive swings of the entire spring when accounting for the pitch location and count. I don't think he would've been able to do that last year. His ABs vs. RHP look so much better right now, even ignoring results.

Highlights and observations from an eventful Monday afternoon in Jupiter. These are merely exhibition games, but Jake Burger has been lost at the plate for the Miami Marlins throughout spring training. Burger entered Monday's game against the Houston Astros with a repulsive .121/.147/.152 slash line in 34 Grapefruit League plate appearances. He wasn't passing the eye test, either—he has frequently been late on fastballs and caught guessing on secondary stuff. Given his relatively brief track record of MLB regular season success, it was reasonable to be a bit worried about whether the corner infielder can pick up where he left off in 2023 as an everyday, middle-of-the-order run producer. Well, Burger is still plenty capable of punishing mistakes. He ripped a 432-foot solo shot to left field off of venerable closer Josh Hader in the bottom of the sixth inning. The context is rather important here. Hader was not his usual self, struggling with both fastball velocity and location on Monday. Jazz Chisholm Jr. took him yard in the very next plate appearance, also against a 94 mph fastball that Hader misplaced. Hader proceeded to allow two more hits and got yanked before completing the inning. That being said, it's reassuring to have some evidence that the Burger hasn't been sapped of his outstanding raw power. The Marlins added a third long ball in the bottom of the ninth when Dane Myers delivered a walk-off solo blast off of Cole McDonald. elpLZDVfVlZjPV9Wd2dEQndGV1Z3SUFYbEFCWGdBQVVBVlRBQUFFQWxrQVZnUlVBZ0VFVlFJSEFRRUM=.mp4 Does Givens get a spot? Also worth noting from the 6-5 Marlins win, recently signed righty reliever Mychal Givens pitched in his first spring training game. Givens has more major league experience than any other pitcher in Marlins camp and numerous injuries have seemingly created an opening for the non-roster invitee. The question is how much of his stuff and command can he recapture after being derailed by injuries of his own in 2023. Givens matched up against Astros minor leaguers in the top of the fifth. His scoreless inning included a Will Wagner groundout, a David Hensley single, a Trey Cabbage lineout, a Tommy Sacco Jr. walk and a César Salazar strikeout. He used his full arsenal (four-seamer, sinker, changeup and slider). There's time for Givens to make two more Grapefruit League appearances, ideally against stronger competition. Astros lift off vs. birthday boy Celebrating his 28th birthday, Darren McCaughan replaced Marlins scheduled starter Bryan Hoeing on relatively short notice. The Astros lineup did not take it easy on the soft-tossing right-hander. McCaughan (3.1 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1 HR, 65 pitches/40 strikes) allowed eight Houston baserunners, including a home run to Trey Cabbage. He worked a clean third inning, but was otherwise pitching with constant traffic around him. Hoeing later entered out of the bullpen and handled the sixth and seventh innings. Latest camp cuts Prior to the game, the Marlins reassigned NRIs C Will Banfield, INF Tristan Gray, INF/OF Javier Sanoja and LHP Devin Smeltzer to minor league camp. Banfield was the most productive of the bunch in Grapefruit League action. Our 20th-ranked Marlins prospect, Banfield's biggest flaw has been his lack of plate discipline, so it was highly encouraging to see him strike out only once in 17 plate appearances (albeit while primarily facing minor league backups). He is well-positioned to make his MLB debut at some point in 2024 if either Christian Bethancourt or Nick Fortes miss time due to injuries. Banfield could even overtake Fortes on the depth chart if there isn't an early-season uptick in his offensive production. Sanoja (FOF's #23 prospect) likewise excelled in the bat-to-ball department this spring, but that was to be expected of him. He also dabbled at five different defensive positions. Gray came to Jupiter as a sleeper to earn an active roster spot. The Tim Anderson signing halted his momentum. Gray's approach vs. left-handed pitchers still needs improvement. Smeltzer has not cracked 90 mph with any of the 149 pitches he's thrown this spring. The Marlins would have to be really desperate for a fresh arm to call him up during the season. What's next? The Marlins will be playing split-squad road games on Tuesday against the St. Louis Cardinals (1:05 p.m.) and Houston Astros (6:05 p.m.). Yonny Chirinos is Miami's probable starter vs. St. Louis while A.J. Puk gets the nod for the night game. Fish On First's Noah Berger will be on the scene for both contests. View full article

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