Ely Sussman

On Fish Unfiltered, Marlins president of business Caroline O'Connor updates us on the construction and long-term objectives of the Miami Live! entertainment development that's coming to loanDepot park in 2026. View full video

Player status updates, insightful stats and more information to fully equip you for today's Marlins game. One final preseason matchup before the real fun begins! Here are the latest Miami Marlins game notes, produced by the Marlins communications department and relayed to our loyal SuperSubs. These notes apply to Miami's home exhibition game against the New York Yankees. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (L) CF Derek Hill 1B Matt Mervis (L) DH Jonah Bride RF Kyle Stowers (L) 2B Otto Lopez LF Griffin Conine (L) C Nick Fortes 3B Graham Pauley (L) P Max Meyer View full article

Today's news roundup also includes reporting on the club's experiment with "live pitch design sessions." There are many observations we can take away from spring training action, but every MLB team has the same top priority: make it to the regular season in good health. From that standpoint, the Miami Marlins did poorly. A rash of injuries over the final two weeks of camp have them limping into the real games. Just this past weekend, Connor Norby (left oblique tightness) and Declan Cronin (left hip discomfort) went down. It's already been decided that Cronin will begin the season on the injured list, per MLB.com's Christina De Nicola, while Norby is set to undergo further testing today. That's in addition to Edward Cabrera (right middle finger blister), Andrew Nardi (low back inflammation), Jesús Sánchez (left oblique strain) and Ryan Weathers (left forearm strain), all of whom arrived at camp as locks to make the 26-man roster if healthy, but will instead be sidelined for multiple weeks. Marlins Opening Day is three days away. More Marlins news and content below: 🔷 The final Grapefruit League games are being played today, but the idle Marlins have already clinched the league's lowest winning percentage (.375) after posting a 9-15-5 record. Xavier Edwards and Otto Lopez tied for the team lead with 17 games played. Connor Gillispie threw a team-high 16 ⅓ innings, most of which were effective with the exception of a five-run rally he allowed to the New York Mets in Sunday's fourth inning. Fish On First Top 30 prospects Starlyn Caba and Carter Johnson were among the players who made their Grapefruit League debuts in that contest. A feel-good story during the first half of spring games, Matt Mervis plummeted back down to the earth and finished with a league-leading 22 strikeouts (42.3% of his plate appearances). 🔷 Infielder César García has signed with the Marlins as an international free agent. At this time last year, the left-handed hitter was being listed at 5'7", 144 pounds. As far as I can tell, García is the first player from Panama that the franchise has signed since Oscar Araba in 2021. 🔷 Manager Clayton McCullough still hasn't announced who his starting pitchers will be for the second and third games of the regular season. Gillispie will pitch on one of those days, but not necessarily as a starter. Max Meyer has been penciled in for the fourth game (March 30) and Cal Quantrill for the fifth game (March 31). 🔷 This spring, the Marlins replaced conventional bullpen sessions with "live pitch design sessions," as the New York Post's Joel Sherman details, in order to "work on crafting and pinpointing pitches with an actual hitter up." While participation is not mandatory, "Sandy Alcantara and all the other starters have adhered to this policy," he reports. These sessions will continue into the regular season. 🔷 Greg Cote of the Miami Herald calls upon Bruce Sherman to "get serious about spending and winning or sell the team." 🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, the Cleveland Guardians extended Tanner Bibee (5-YR/$48M), the Toronto Blue Jays extended Alejandro Kirk (5-YR/$58M) and the Arizona Diamondbacks extended Justin Martínez (5-YR/$18M). The Atlanta Braves traded Ian Anderson to the Los Angeles Angels for José Suárez. The Washington Nationals unveiled their new City Connect uniforms. Marlins podcast episodes View full article

With two of their originally projected starters headed to the injured list, the Marlins have had to make some adjustments. Very early in spring training, the Miami Marlins made it clear that Sandy Alcantara would be on the mound for their March 27 season opener. With the season beginning next week, manager Clayton McCullough finally filled in some of the blanks about what the starting rotation looks like behind him during an interview with the Marlins Radio Network on Sunday. McCullough confirmed that Max Meyer and Cal Quantrill will be in the Marlins rotation, though they aren't directly following Alcantara's outing. Their final preseason tune-ups are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, with Meyer starting an exhibition game against the New York Yankees at loanDepot park and Quantrill pitching a simulated game in Jupiter. Their regular season debuts will come five days later—Meyer faces the Pittsburgh Pirates on March 30 and Quantrill gets the first game of the New York Mets series on March 31. In between, things are still fluid. Connor Gillispie, who's pitching Sunday's Grapefruit League finale, is part of the plan for either March 28 or March 29. McCullough left open the possibility that he could be a bulk guy out of the bullpen rather than a conventional starter, with "somebody else" filling a similar role for whichever game Gillispie doesn't do. That "somebody else" could be Valente Bellozo, who's already on the Marlins 40-man roster and had half a season of nice results at the major league level in 2024. However, Bellozo was out-pitched by both non-roster invitees Janson Junk and Xzavion Curry this spring. Perhaps McCullough is purposefully being vague until a corresponding move is made to get Junk or Curry on the 40-man. Recent injuries to Ryan Weathers (left forearm strain) and Edward Cabrera (right middle finger blister) are responsible for causing this rotation chaos. Weathers could be sidelined for a large chunk of the season, but McCullough had an optimistic take on Cabrera. After he throws in Wednesday's sim game, the Marlins intend to send Cabrera out on a minor league rehab assignment. McCullough volunteered April 11 as a potential return date to the majors—that would account for two MiLB rehab starts and bring him back soon after he's eligible to come off the 15-day IL. 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. These notes apply to Miami's road exhibition game against the New York Mets. Starting Lineup LF Javier Sanoja CF Dane Myers RF Kyle Stowers (L) 3B Eric Wagaman 1B Matt Mervis (L) DH Liam Hicks (L) C Rob Brantly (L) SS Starlyn Caba (S) 2B Carter Johnson (L) P Connor Gillispie 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. These notes apply to Miami's home exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals and road exhibition game against the Houston Astros. Game 1 Starting Lineup CF Dane Myers LF Kyle Stowers (L) 1B Matt Mervis (L) DH Eric Wagaman SS Javier Sanoja C Rob Brantly (L) RF Andrés Valor 3B Gage Miller 2B Wilfredo Lara P Valente Bellozo 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. These notes apply to Miami's road exhibition game against the Washington Nationals. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (S) DH Derek Hill RF Griffin Conine (L) 3B Jonah Bride 1B Eric Wagaman CF Dane Myers C Liam Hicks (L) 2B Otto Lopez LF Javier Sanoja P Cal Quantrill View full article

The 25-year-old catcher learned on Friday that he'll be on the Marlins roster. There will be a handful of Miami Marlins players participating on Thursday in their first career Opening Day as major leaguers. It'll be an extra-special milestone for Liam Hicks, who is on the verge of making his MLB debut. Hicks is the first Rule 5 catcher in franchise history to seamlessly break camp with the big league club the following year. A social media post from the Marlins on Friday confirmed that he has made the 26-man active roster. Manager Clayton McCullough delivered the news to him. Looking back at it, I was surprised by how few Marlins Rule 5 picks regardless of position matched that modest feat. Most notably, Dan Uggla (2005 draft/2006 roster) hit the ground running and quickly emerged as a key cog. The only others who began the regular season in Miami were Sterling Sharp (2019/2020) and Paul Campbell and Zach Pop (2020/2021). That's it! Particularly in recent years, Marlins picks have been hampered by health issues. Elieser Hernandez, for example, eventually logged six seasons in the majors, but his debut was delayed in 2018 by a tooth infection. An even more atypical (and frightening) case, Nic Enright seemingly had a clear path to cracking the 2023 roster before being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It's rare for catchers to be taken by any team in the major league phase of the Rule 5. Prior to Hicks, it hadn't happened since 2016 when Luis Torrens and Stuart Turner were picked and subsequently made the Opening Day roster with their new clubs (the San Diego Padres and Cincinnati Reds, respectively). In terms of rookie season performance, Torrens and Turner set a very low bar for Hicks to clear. Both of them were buried on the bench for most of the 2017 season and neither came close to "hitting their weight"—Torrens slashed .163/.243/.203 in 139 plate appearances, while Turner slashed .134/.182/.244 in 89 plate appearances. The latter never received another opportunity in the majors after that. In 12 spring training games prior to Friday, Hicks slashed .208/.424/.250 with more walks (six) than strikeouts (five) and gained experience catching most members of the projected Opening Day pitching staff, including Sandy Alcantara, Cal Quantrill and Max Meyer. He received approximately the same amount of Grapefruit League playing time as Nick Fortes, though that's in part because the veteran was slowed by back and groin injuries. Expect Fortes to start the majority of Marlins games behind the plate for the time being. It'll be interesting to see if Hicks, Fortes and Agustín Ramírez can co-exist on the Marlins roster later this year when Ramírez is deemed major league-ready. Rule 5 picks cannot be optioned to the minors during the season following their draft. In the unlikely scenario that Hicks slumps extensively both offensively and defensively and Ramírez's glove work behind the plate is meaningfully improved, the Marlins might return Hicks to his previous team, the Detroit Tigers. However, if they view Hicks as anything more than a partial-season stopgap, it's worth noting that he and Ramírez each have MiLB experience at first base which adds to their versatility. View full article

Marlins players had to be remeasured during spring training to establish the dimensions of their personal strike zone. Here are the official listings that changed as a result. Even though it isn't coming to meaningful games quite yet, the automated ball-strike system (ABS) that has been utilized throughout MLB spring training took some effort to set up. One of the necessary steps was to take height measurements of each player to compute the vertical boundaries (top and bottom) of their strike zone. Instead of defaulting to the listed heights available, the league remeasured everybody, and it's good that they did because there were some...discrepancies. Inspired by Jim Margalus of Sox Machine, I compared the current listed heights of Miami Marlins players to those that had been displayed in early February. The only Marlin whose height changed by multiple inches? Diminutive shortstop Xavier Edwards. Previously believed to be 5'10", Edwards is now down to 5'8". The other players on the 40-man roster who shrunk as a result of the ABS process are Derek Hill (from 6'1" to 6'0") and Victor Mesa Jr. (6'0" to 5'11"). Surprisingly, just as many Marlins added to their height. Jesús Sánchez (6'3" to 6'4"), Agustín Ramírez (6'0" to 6'1") and Jonah Bride (5'10" to 5'11") went up one inch apiece. During Grapefruit League action, which concludes this weekend, each team has been allowed to challenge two pitches per game. Those challenges can be initiated by either the pitcher, batter or catcher. The entire process has typically taken less than 30 seconds per challenge before the pitch's precise location is shown and play resumes. The general belief is that ABS will be coming to the MLB regular season in 2026. In the meantime, there will be plenty of borderline calls for players and fans to whine about. 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. These notes apply to Miami's home exhibition game against the Houston Astros. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (S) CF Derek Hill 1B Matt Mervis (L) 3B Connor Norby LF Griffin Conine (L) RF Kyle Stowers (L) 2B Otto Lopez C Liam Hicks (L) DH Rob Brantly P Janson Junk View full article