What was expected?

After an exciting 2023 season that ended with a wild card appearance, the Marlins expected to make another run at the playoffs in 2024. Though they would be without the ace of their rotation, Sandy Alcantara, because of his recovery from Tommy John surgery (TJS), they were optimistic about their pitching staff because of the youth and talent at the top of the rotation in Jesus Luzardo and Eury Perez, plus Braxton Garrett coming off of a breakout season and Edward Cabrera looking to bounce back from a disappointing 2023 performance. The bullpen was considered a strength, with Tanner Scott dominantly shutting down games, Andrew Nardi, George Soriano and Bryan Hoeing in middle relief and Anthony Bender returning from TJS plus Sixto Sanchez trying to make his return to the big leagues, but as a reliever instead of a starter. On the offensive side, they had the reigning National League batting champion in Luis Arraez, exciting OF Jazz Chisholm Jr., burgeoning slugger Jake Burger and 20/20 threat Jesus Sanchez, with some veterans and youngsters filling out the rest of the lineup. Though they did not think they could win the division, the organization did believe they were in a strong position to compete for and land in one of the Wild Card spots.

How did it go?

To put it bluntly: very, very poorly. They went from 84 wins and a wild card spot to 62 wins and the third worst record in all of baseball. They traded away Luis Arraez, Tanner Scott, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Josh Bell, Trevor Rogers, A.J. Puk, JT Chargois, Bryan Hoeing, Huascar Brazoban and Bryan De La Cruz. Nearly half of the starting lineup and almost every good reliever was moved in July, leaving the team devoid of any “star” hitters or healthy “star” pitching. Eury Perez missed the season due to TJS, Jesus Luzardo missed more than half of the season and pitched extremely poorly when healthy, Braxton Garrett suffered through a variety of injuries to his left arm and tossed only 37 innings and Edward Cabrera struggled to make the leap. The only “highlights”, if you will, were the outstanding partial season from Xavier Edwards (2.2 WAR in just 303 plate appearances), Jake Burger hitting 29 home runs and Jesus Sanchez chasing a 20/20 season.

Fantasy Stud?

Jake Burger had the best full fantasy season of any still left on the Marlins roster at the end of September, as he finished as a top 75 bat and a top 120 player overall. He regressed some from his breakout 2023 season, when he hit 34 home runs over 540 plate appearances, as he hit his 29 home runs over 579 plate appearances in 2024. He did drop his strikeout rate from 27.6% to 25.9%, but his walk rate also dropped 0.5%, which doesn’t seem like much, but when your walk rate is under 6%, every percentage point counts.

He maintained great statcast numbers, even though they dropped across the board, due to his quick hands and plus-plus power. He had a 12.3% barrel rate (16.7% in 2023), 46.8% hard-hit rate (49.3% in 2023), 91.3 MPH average exit velocity (91.9 MPH avgEV in 2023) and a maximum exit velocity of 115.5 MPH (118.2 MPH maxEV in 2023). All of those numbers place him amongst the top 20% of hitters at the big league level.

The Marlins offense will probably be much worse in 2025 than it was in 2024, with no Chisholm Jr., Arraez, De La Cruz or Bell to start off the year, but Burger should be able to maintain his value due to the power upside (30+ home runs are a given with 600 or more plate appearances) and average counting stats.

Fantasy Dud?

There’s really no one left on the active roster that could have been a bigger disappointment than Jesus Luzardo (I couldn’t put Eury Perez here since he never even made a start, even though he was drafted heavily, landing near the end of the eighth round on average), who was drafted around pick 86 on average, beginning the year as many teams’ SP1 or SP2 and finishing the year just inside the top 150 starting pitchers overall.

Luzardo struggled with injuries and, when he was healthy, performed very poorly. He ended the year throwing only 66.2 innings, striking out 58 (his 7.83 K/9 was the lowest of his career), walking 22 (his BB/9 was still under three, but just barely so at 2.97), allowing nine home runs (his HR/9 has risen two seasons in a row), but failing to last at least five innings in a start only twice.

I’d like to think that he was just unlucky and blame the production on his injury, since a lot of his advanced numbers were closely in line with his 2023 season. His chase rate was only 1.6% lower than 2023, contact rate only up 1.1%, swinging strike rate down 0.4%, barrel rate was up only 0.6%, hard-hit rate up 1.3% and his avgEV was only up 0.9 miles per hour.

If he enters spring training fully healthy I expect a bounce back season. Sandy Alcantara will be back to head the rotation, Luzardo can settle in as the #2 starter and hopefully build on his 2023 season.

Fantasy Surprise?

Could this be anyone other than Xavier Edwards? Absolutely not. Edwards was a breath of fresh air for an offense that had struggled to get men on base and define a lead off hitter. That changed pretty much as soon as Edwards was called up this year.

He had a brief 30 game appearance in 2023, though he didn’t really showcase how great his eye at the plate was nor did he demonstrate how lethal he was on the bases, but 2024 was a different story. His 10.9% walk rate was more in line with his upper level minor league walk rates than his 3.6% rate in 2023 was and he was able to limit strikeouts to just a 17.2% rate, which is higher than his minor league average, but not grossly so.

Though he showed off double-digit power at Triple-A in 2022 and ’23, that may have been more environment driven than true power, since he hit only two home runs over 506 plate appearances between the majors in ’23 and ’24 and Triple-A in 2024.

What fantasy managers will really look forward to with Edwards is the extremely high batting average floor (one of the few guys I feel like can guarantee you a 0.285 or better batting average), near-elite level speed (if the Marlins give him carte blanche on the base paths he may steal 60 or more bases in 2025) and ability to get on base (a 10% walk rates plus a 0.290 or better batting average is a nice little on-base combination). He should be a three-category “stud”, wherein he will be among the leaders of two of the three categories while performing above-average in the third. He has the ability to be a top 100 player this upcoming season; from July 2nd, when he was up and stayed in the big leagues permanently, he had the second most steals (behind Ohtani) and third best batting-average (behind only Witt Jr. and Gurrero Jr.) and the 39th most WAR-produced out of all hitters.

Player Breakdowns:

Hitters

Jesus Sanchez – OF

I would not have predicted that Sanchez would end up being the best Jesus in Miami in 2024, but here we are. Sanchez far outperformed his draft position, since he was drafted around pick 403 in NFBC drafts, but ended the year as a top 100 bat and a top 160 player overall.

Sanchez set career high’s across the board nearly, as he played in the most games of his young career (149), hitting a career high 18 home runs, driving in 64, scoring 60 runs and stealing 16 bases (higher than any season in the minor leagues, as well), though he matched his WAR total from 2023, just 1.4.

His walk rate dropped 1.9%, though the 9.5% walk rate he had in 2023 may have been an anomaly, especially if you compare it to the other 4 seasons and nearly 1200 plate appearances. The power rates were lower than they had been in any prior season and Sanchez has struggled to get to his immense power in games, though that may have more to do with his GB/FB rate of 1.171 than his overall skills.

His statcast numbers – 92.5 avgEV, 117.2 maxEV, 12.2% barrel rate and 50.9% hard-hit rate – lead me to believe that he could easily hit 30 or more home runs in a season, if he decided to lift the ball more and stop burning the ground up with smoked ground balls.

Sanchez may be an afterthought in many drafts in 2025, especially because the Marlins might have one of, if not the worst, offenses in all of baseball, but he makes a decent OF4 or OF5 in 15 team leagues and could easily replicate his 2024 if not surpass it.

Otto Lopez – 2B

He won’t show up on any rookie of the year voting ballots, but Lopez had a decent 2024 overall. Yes, his offense was below average, but, from May 5th forward (he had 415 of his 434 PA after that point) he was the 14th best 2B offensively. That may not sound THAT great, but for a guy who was literally undrafted to end up top 15 at a position for like 80% of the season? That’s pretty great.

From May 5th forward he had the sixth most steals, eighth best batting averaged and tied for 18th most runs, RBI and home runs among 2B with at least 400 plate appearances. He was, at worst, a decent middle infield option in deep leagues and, at best, one of the worst starters at 2B in 15 team leagues (like most high stakes leagues).

He should open the season as the starting 2B for the Marlins and should actually have an ADP (average draft position) somewhere inside the top 450 or so, though he won’t see much of a value shift unless he has some unknown power he can tap into or he gets particularly aggressive on the base paths and steals upwards of 40 bags.

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