Ely Sussman

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 the third game of Miami's home series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (S) 2B Otto Lopez 3B Jonah Bride 1B Eric Wagaman RF Dane Myers CF Derek Hill DH Kyle Stowers (L) C Nick Fortes LF Javier Sanoja 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 the second game of Miami's home series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (S) LF Kyle Stowers (L) DH Jonah Bride 1B Matt Mervis (L) 2B Otto Lopez RF Griffin Conine (L) C Liam Hicks (L) CF Derek Hill 3B Graham Pauley (L) P Connor Gillispie View full article

Deeply appreciate the support!

Worked a lot of deep counts! They struggled in that department last season.

Nearly a month into Triple-A Jacksonville's regular season, De Los Santos has gone deep only once. However, he's still been an effective offensive player overall. The man who led Minor League Baseball in home runs last season is currently tied for seventh on his own team in that category. It has been a weird start to the 2025 season for Deyvison De Los Santos, though not necessarily a bad one. De Los Santos was homerless in 17 consecutive games to begin the season. That was the second-longest home run drought of his minor league career, trailing only a 33-gamer in 2021 when he was a teenager making the leap from rookie ball to Low-A. He snapped out of it on April 19, and even that one barely eluded the grasp of the opposing outfielder. Entering play on Friday, however, Fish On First's seventh-ranked prospect is getting on base at a substantially higher rate than he did when facing Triple-A pitching last year. Accounting for the ultra-hitting-friendly conditions that juiced his numbers during a stint in the Pacific Coast League, De Los Santos is actually a better offensive player in his current form. De Los Santos at AAA in 2024 (99 G): .264/.311/.523, 26 HR, 0 SB, 102 wRC+ De Los Santos at AAA in 2025 (22 G): .305/.363/.416, 1 HR, 3 SB, 118 wRC+ The quality of contact that De Los Santos has been making is still excellent. His 56.4% hard-hit rate is good for 17th out of the 264 players who have at least 50 plate appearances at Triple-A, according to Baseball Savant. He is virtually tied with newly promoted Athletics top prospect Nick Kurtz in that category. Elevating the ball is important for a below-average runner like De Los Santos and he is continuing to chip away at his career-long ground ball issue. His GB% rate has dropped from 57.0% in 2021 to 54.8% in 2022 to 52.8% in 2023 to 49.6% in 2024 to 41.8% so far in 2025. Also (and perhaps most importantly), De Los Santos has tweaked his plate approach to be more selective. During his first taste of Triple-A, he swung at 45.6% of pitches outside the strike zone, a chase rate which would've been the second-highest among qualified major leaguers in 2024. That was not going to be sustainable for somebody who is already vulnerable to whiffing on pitches in the zone. So far in 2025, his chase rate is 32.2%—for context, that's in the same ballpark as Otto Lopez and Kyle Stowers. You might assume that De Los Santos is getting unlucky to have only one home run to this point, but he frankly hasn't been coming close to clearing the fences. While the lineout below would've been gone to other parts of the field, that is the lone exception. All of his other batted balls have had estimated distances of 353 feet or less. eHlQOE1fV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0F3QlhVd0JYVmdRQVhsRlRCd0FIQXdWUUFBTURCVllBQVZjTUJRY0FVbEVHQ0FSVg==.mp4 If anything, luck has been on DDLS' side. His batting average on balls in play is a sky-high .444. That will not hold up regardless of how many sharp line drives he produces. So yeah, it's been a mixed bag for Deyvison De Los Santos. The Marlins will take their time letting the 21-year-old incubate in Jacksonville until he puts it all together. Between Matt Mervis, Eric Wagaman and Agustín Ramírez, first base and designated hitter are occupied at the big league level, anyway. (As a footnote, De Los Santos has been starting once per series at third base to offer a shred of defensive versatility. He looks like an emergency option there at best due to lack of arm strength, but to his credit, he's been making all of the routine plays.) 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 Opening Day, the first game of Miami's home series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Starting Lineup SS Xavier Edwards (S) LF Kyle Stowers (L) DH Jonah Bride 1B Matt Mervis (L) 2B Otto Lopez RF Griffin Conine (L) CF Derek Hill 3B Graham Pauley (L) C Nick Fortes P Sandy Alcantara View full article

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For the second consecutive year, the Miami Marlins have completed a trade on Opening Day eve. In 2024, it was flipping Jon Berti for prospects. This time around, they're adding to the big league roster by acquiring out-of-options right-hander Tyler Phillips from the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for cash considerations. The Marlins designated righty reliever Seth Martinez for assignment as the corresponding 40-man roster move. Phillips made his MLB debut midway through last season. He tossed an improbable shutout on July 27, but allowed 28 runs (all earned) in his other 27 ⅔ innings pitched. There was a poor outing against the Marlins mixed in there (4.1 IP, 9 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 4 K on Aug. 14). Phillips' pitch mix includes a sinker, sweeper, four-seam fastball, curveball and changeup. He has induced ground balls at a high rate throughout much of his professional career, including this past spring (63.0 GB%). However, the Phillies still designated him for assignment on Sunday. It might be a brief stint for Phillips in Miami as the team seems poised to churn through multi-inning, low-leverage arms until their injured guys make their way back from the IL. Seth Martinez had two separate stints with the Fish during spring training, most recently returning via waivers on March 15. He threw a scoreless inning in each of his three Grapefruit League appearances last week. Perhaps the "tiebreaker" between Phillips and Martinez was that the former was capable of providing more bulk at this stage of the season. With Martinez in DFA limbo, Anthony Bender, who turned 30 in February, is expected to be the oldest player on the Marlins Opening Day roster. View full rumor

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