Ely Sussman

Here's what you need to know with 58 days to go until Marlins Opening Day... 🔹 The new Fish On First video section is live! Our staff is busy year-round creating video content in the form of interviews, livestreams, podcasts, player highlights and more, so I'm very excited to make all of that more accessible than ever. 🔹 In conjunction with that, ads are now live on the site as well. If you don't notice them, that's because you are a teal SuperSub—funding our work at the highest level comes with many perks, including ad-free browsing. 🔹 Victor Mesa Jr. played in another exhibition for FEPCUBE on Monday, batting leadoff and starting in left field. Daniel Rodriguez was on the scene to witness the Cuban victory and speak with former Marlin Peter O'Brien postgame. 🔹 Elsewhere around baseball, the Twins and Mariners made a five-player trade sending infielder Jorge Polanco to Seattle, Justin Turner (1/$13M) signed with the Blue Jays and the Angels signed Aaron Hicks to a one-year deal. The Marlins showed serious interest in Turner last offseason at a similar price, but he signed with the Red Sox instead. No evidence that they pursued him as aggressively this time around. 🔹 We have published Caribbean Series team previews for Curacao, México and Nicaragua. Four more team previews to come leading up to the start of the tournament on Thursday. 🔹 Peter Bendix spoke somewhat candidly to Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald about the sorry state of the Marlins farm system. “Our farm system is really important," Bendix says. "It’s the lifeblood of what we do.” 🔹 SuperSub Loud Marlins Fan is seeking some company for the Marlins' first two Spring Training games. Contact him on Twitter if interested and available. 🔹 Lemon City Live's Alex Aguirre has brought back The First Pitch 3:05 Podcast. The debut of the pod's second season is embedded below. Marlins Podcast Episodes View full article

Former Miami Marlin Peter O'Brien talks to Fish On First about uniting with fellow Cuban players on FEPCUBE and updates us on his professional career. View full video

Incredible timing 😂...Hicks went to the Angels within minutes of you suggesting this.

Marlins left-hander Andrew Nardi meets with the media in advance of 2024 Spring Training. View full video

Here is Skip Schumaker's full acceptance speech after being presented with the 2023 NL Manager of the Year award at the New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner on January 27, 2024. View full video

The Marlins announced the hiring of four new baseball executives on January 16, including assistant general manager Gabe Kapler. Fish On First LIVE's Ely Sussman, Isaac Azout and Kevin Barral discuss his quirky Marlins Hot Stove Show interview. View full video

It's a fascinating question. Like I imagine most people feel, I expect Pérez to have the best overall career, but development is rarely linear. Throughout his career so far, he's rarely been allowed to pitch deep into his starts and it's difficult to project how he would handle that initially. For 2024 alone, I lean toward Luzardo. He's capable of more or less repeating his performance from last season.

Here's what you need to know with 59 days to go until Marlins Opening Day... 🔹 The defending Caribbean Series champions, Tigres del Licey, defeated Estrellas Orientales on Saturday to clinch the Dominican Winter League title and earn an opportunity to repeat at this week's tournament. Ageless former Marlin Emilio Bonifácio played a major role in helping them get there. Tiburones de La Guaira clinched the Venezuelan title on Sunday. One of my personal favorites, Harold Ramírez, is a starting outfielder for them. Fish On First will be providing extensive Caribbean Series coverage here. 🔹 Elsewhere around baseball, the Tigers extended infield prospect Colt Keith (6/$28.6M). The deal could cover up to nine years if all club options are exercised. Keith is the seventh player to a receive a pre-debut contract extension of this nature and the second one this offseason, joining Jackson Chourio of the Brewers. Free agent Héctor Neris (1/$9M) signed with the Cubs, Adam Ottavino (1/$4.5M) signed with the Mets and Alex Wood (financials not yet reported) signed with the Athletics. 🔹 Kevin Barral asked A.J. Puk about competing for a starting rotation spot and his thoughts on the Marlins' front office changes. Kevin also wrote the first of our team-by-team Caribbean Series previews, leading off with Mexico. 🔹 Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald wrote about the critical relationship between Peter Bendix and Skip Schumaker. 🔹 Bendix divulged more about his personal life in the final part of his interview with MLB.com's Christina De Nicola. He's an alum of Cleveland Heights High School, graduating a few years ahead of Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. 🔹 Schumaker dressed up and jetted up to New York to accept his 2023 NL Manager of the Year award. Watch his full speech below. 🔹 For the first time in 2024, we're preparing a Marlins Jeopardy contest! Can't do it without a category of your audience questions. Submit them here for a chance to be featured on the show. 🔹 The Prospects 1500 staff ranked the top 50 Marlins prospects. 🔹 And lastly, congratulations to Parker Heyser. He is the winner of our SuperSub Eury Pérez jersey giveaway. We are immensely appreciative of everybody who has SuperSub'd through the first 10 days of our new site's existence! We'll do our best to make it a worthwhile investment throughout the year with more periodic giveaways like this. Marlins Podcast Episodes View full article

Luis Arraez and Jake Burger became the first players to try them out during Friday's FanFest. After almost 24 hours of build-up, the Miami Marlins showed the world two additions to their 2024 uniform mix on Friday, as modeled by two of last year's most popular player acquisitions, Luis Arraez and Jake Burger. Arraez strutted around wearing the revised black uni, while Burger modeled a brand-new blue one. The Marlins have changed the lettering on their black uni from black to white, relenting to the years-long complaint that the black-on-black design was too difficult to read due to lack of contrast. That's a minor yet indisputable improvement, in my opinion. The blue addition has been brewing for years, according to former Marlins communications chief Jason Latimer. The club has utilized this variant of blue during Spring Training since the 2018-19 rebrand, but never for regular season games. Both the black and blue uniforms read "Marlins" across the chest, unlike the standard home whites and City Connect unis, which have "Miami" in that position. No specifics yet on how often or on what occasions you'll be seeing these worn on the field. Which of the two do you like more? View full article

Here's what you need to know with 62 days to go until Marlins Opening Day... 🔹 Thursday's winter ball notes: In the Dominican Republic, RF/3B Vidal Bruján went 0-for-4 with a walk, run scored and outfield assist. His Estrellas Orientales rallied from a 5-0 deficit to force extra innings, but still lost. They're facing elimination on Friday. In Panamá, C Christian Bethancourt helped Federales de Chiriquí to a blowout win. They can clinch a league championship (and a Caribbean Series berth) with another victory today. 🔹 Check out Marlins Media Day interviews on the Fish On First YouTube channel featuring Josh Bell, Jake Burger, Braxton Garrett, Bryan De La Cruz, Jesús Sánchez, Andrew Nardi, Nick Fortes and Ryan Weathers. Nardi said he has reworked his seldom-used changeup into a splitter and Weathers has added a two-seam fastball. Perhaps the most encouraging takeaway was De La Cruz admitting his defense and baserunning needed improvement and devoting the vast majority of his offseason work to those areas. Despite being in Miami's lineup practically every day, DLC accrued only 0.2 fWAR last season with those deficiencies negating a lot of his production at the plate. 🔹 The Marlins are updating their uniforms, as first reported by Billy Gil of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. The hints put out on Thursday suggest these are common sense improvements. We'll see them debut at today's FanFest. 🔹 Elsewhere around baseball, Joc Pederson (1/$12.5M) signed with the Diamondbacks and David Robertson (1/$11-12M) signed with the Rangers. Robertson's August slump in Miami didn't come back to bite him after all. He's actually getting a slight pay raise from the previous year. 🔹 Results are in from our January 2024 confidence poll. Combining results from the website poll and Twitter replies, the average response was 4.89 (on a scale of 1-10). I'll run the next poll in late February right before Spring Training games get underway. 🔹 Thanks to Cali from the Battered Marlins Fans podcast for joining us on the latest Fish On First LIVE. The show is now 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. 🔹 Baseball America posted their updated Marlins Top 30 prospects list, including new international signee Luis Cova at No. 4. Their list includes 2023 draft picks OF Mark Coley, RHP Xavier Meachem and LHP Emmett Olson—haven't seen them on anybody else's Top 30. 🔹 Follow Isaac Azout and Kevin Barral for live FanFest coverage. You can also listen to the Marlins Radio Network from 3-5 p.m. for interviews with Skip Schumaker, Jesús Luzardo, Tanner Scott and others. 🔹 One more reminder that we'll be selecting a SuperSub to win a Eury Pérez jersey! Sign up here by Sunday at 11:59 p.m. ET to be eligible to win it. Marlins Podcast Episodes View full article

Five years after completely rebranding, the team is teasing more changes that will be revealed at Friday's FanFest. We were bracing for a subdued Marlins FanFest this year. The scheduling is unconventional and the fanbase is largely dissatisfied with the team's offseason idleness. Then on FanFest eve, a report by Billy Gil from The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz changed the mood: Well, I shouldn't be hyperbolic. There are some disgruntled people so fixated on the Marlins current roster and its flaws that they cannot generate any enthusiasm for cosmetic changes. However, from what we can see from the team's tease and deduce with common sense, this is good news. We clearly are not talking about a full-blown rebrand—those need to be unveiled much earlier in the offseason when they happen. The color scheme is staying the same as is the font. This is about taking more subtle steps in the right direction. In my opinion, the weakest link in the Marlins' pre-existing uniform rotation was the black-on-black, which had been used for both home and road games in 2023. It was simply hard to read the lettering, even when TV cameras provided a close-up view. Replacing the back lettering with white should make a significant difference. Years after I—then as site manager of Fish Stripes—began advocating for the Marlins to wear blue during meaningful games, they seem to be finally giving in. The blue Spring Training/batting practice uniforms have been extremely popular since debuting in 2019. Making that blue the base color of a regular season uni ought to be awesome. Separate article coming soon once the Marlins give us a complete view of these threads! View full article

Yup, unfortunately. One of the subtle changes with him has been the drop-off in making contact when chasing pitches outside the zone. Not as severe as García's problem with that, but Mancini will need to be more selective to extend his career.

Here’s what you should know with 63 days to go until Marlins Opening Day… 🔹 It's the highest-profile signing for the Marlins so far this offseason, albeit it's another one of the minor league variety. Trey Mancini will be a non-roster invitee at big league camp. He is coming off the worst year of his seven-season big league career, but isn't far removed from being an adequate, everyday right-handed bat. I give Mancini about a 65% chance of cracking Miami's Opening Day roster. 🔹 Christina De Nicola of MLB.com also reports that the Marlins have signed RHP Elvis Alvarado coming off a fantastic showing in winter ball (0 R in 12.2 IP). The Marlins are up to nine NRIs, including Alvarado and oft-injured José Devers (entering his seventh season in the organization). 🔹 In Barry Jackson's latest for the Miami Herald, he reports that Peter Bendix is simply being disciplined when it comes to free agency. Bruce Sherman has not set any sort of rigid "payroll ceiling" and there is room to add veteran talent without necessarily offloading other contracts. Shortstop is the "most likely" position that they're considering addressing before the dust settles. 🔹 Louis Addeo-Weiss isn't buying that hopeful spin. He sees a potential rebuild on the horizon. 🔹 Elsewhere around baseball, Fish On First's own Noah Berger reports that Bally Sports Florida is doing English-language broadcasts for most Caribbean Series games. A familiar voice to Marlins fans, Craig Minervini will be the play-by-play announcer. 🔹 Kevin Barral created your guide to Marlins FanFest, which is coming up on Friday from 4-10 p.m. Free tickets! Free parking! Hope you can make it. 🔹 Lots of Marlins players are back in town in advance of FanFest. Jake Burger brought his family to a Miami Heat game. The team enlisted Peyton Burdick, Edward Cabrera, Bryan De La Cruz, Xavier Edwards, Steven Okert, Eury Pérez and George Soriano to mingle with sponsors at the ballpark (pictured above). 🔹 Marlins Media Day is being held today from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Follow Isaac Azout and Noah Berger for updates. 🔹 We'll break down the most interesting quotes and observations tonight from 6-7 p.m. during Fish On First LIVE, streaming on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram. The show is now 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. 🔹 Congrats to Marlins reliever Kaleb Ort, who was honored by his alma mater, Lowell High School (MI), with a jersey retirement. Marlins Podcast Episodes View full article

The everyday player upside is still there. That's very ambitious, though. I'd almost prefer it if he had extreme splits, something to indicate with more certainty that he can help as a part-time guy like old friend Coop, who raked against LHP last season. Maybe that's why Mancini is a minor league deal guy while Coop is destined for some kind of guarantee.

The "majority" of the tournament's 25 games will be carried by the same regional sports network that's been the longtime home of the Marlins. Earlier this offseason, the Miami Marlins boasted about securing an exclusive partnership for the broadcast rights of the Caribbean Series. Their press release made it clear that the event would get English-language coverage as it moves to U.S. soil for the first time in decades. With the start of the tournament only a week away, we have more clarity about those broadcast plans, courtesy of Fish On First's own Noah Berger: Craig Minervini has been with Bally Sports Florida for most of the network's existence. His 22 seasons of Marlins work have centered around pregame/postgame hosting duties, but also included in-game reporting and occasional play-by-play. In 2023, Tommy Hutton, Rod Allen, Gaby Sanchez and Jeff Nelson rotated as Marlins TV analysts. Sanchez would seemingly be a logical candidate to contribute to these broadcasts considering he participated in winter ball during his playing career and makes his year-round home in Miami, but that's just my speculation. It's also possible that Bally goes outside the Marlins family for Minervini's boothmate. Bally also handles local broadcasts for the Miami Heat and Florida Panthers. The Heat have four games that overlap with Caribbean Series matchups, while the Panthers have two. However, the Caribbean Series utilizes a lot of morning and mid-afternoon start times to mitigate these conflicts. The Spanish-language calls for most Serie del Caribe games will be available on ESPN Deportes and ESPN+. They've been carrying that side of it for several years. Two active Marlins, Vidal Bruján and Christian Bethancourt, are hoping to participate on behalf of the Dominican Republic and Panamá, respectively. Newsbreaker Noah and Kevin Barral will have credentialed coverage for you from LoanDepot Park throughout the Caribbean Series. View full article