2025 Team Previews - Miami Marlins
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the Miami Marlins ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
A lot of things have gone wrong for the Marlins in the last year and a half or so. They had two of the league’s better pitchers (Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez) miss the entire 2024 season, and they also saw Jesus Luzardo miss most of the season. Their offense was nowhere near good enough to make up for that, and they finished with a record of 62-100, the third-worst in the league.
But they are approaching some of the light at the end of the tunnel. Alcantara and Luzardo, barring any setbacks, will be fully back and ready to go for 2025, and Eury Perez won’t be too far behind him. That makes for a very strong 1-3 in the rotation, and they have some decent options to fill out those final two spots as well.
The offense doesn’t look great, but they have some young talent, and they might even be willing to add on a bat or two this offseason as they try to take advantage of this pitching staff.
Remember this thing?
Remember Mike Stanton? Those two things are what I think of when I think of the Marlins. I guess I also remember that 2003 World Series with Dontrelle Willis and Josh Beckett.
That was about the time I was really getting into baseball and actually understanding it to the point where I could follow it properly.
I worry about that with my kids. They’re subjected to watch some Pirate games with me early in the year before my dreams are crushed, and every once in a while, I’ll think, “Man, these kids are going to have no idea what is happening here.” Basketball is somewhat simple: put the ball in the hoop. Football is somewhat simple: get the ball to that bigger rectangle on the field. But baseball makes no inherent sense. My kids do understand that the goal is to hit the ball. But they don’t get that you have to hit the ball and then have nobody catch it before it lands. Or you have to run to the white square before someone does pick up the ball and throw it to the guy standing on that white square. It’s a lot to teach.
I’m going to have to practice a lot of restraint in spending the proper time on the basics before launching into statistical explanations of expected outcomes. I will require my kids to understand such things by sixth grade, but we’re a long way from that for right now.
We can get into the Marlins preview now!
The Roster
It’s not good. They don’t have anybody you’d call a stud hitter. They also don’t have more than a couple of total duds here, and we have a bunch of guys in their mid-twenties who could make strides forward.
The rotation doesn’t currently feature Eury Perez, but his Tommy John surgery was way back in April 2024, so you would guess he’ll only miss a month or two at worst. They’ll likely take it easy with him again, but he’ll be a significant factor here - and he’s very good.
Hitters
Jake Burger
Age: 28
Pos: 1B/3B
It was a tale of two halves for Burger. But first, let’s talk about his season line:
.247/.297/.456, 68 R, 29 HR, 76 RBI, 25.9% K%, 5.4% BB%
You will take a 29-homer season in all fantasy leagues. Burger matters for fantasy purposes. And we should still be remembering the 2023 season he had:
.250/.310/.520, 71 R, 34 HR, 80 RBI, 27.2% K%, 6.0% BB%
He’s 15th in baseball in the homers if we go back to 2023. That alone makes this a guy who should be drafted in all leagues.
Let’s take a look at the 2024 season trend now.
Apr: .702 OPS, 3 HR
May: .500 OPS, 1 HR
Jun: .612 OPS, 3 HR
Jul: .963 OPS, 8 HR
Aug: .974 OPS, 10 HR
Sep: .703 OPS, 4 HR
Burger really sizzled in the heat, doing the bulk of the damage in July and August.
Burger has a long history of hitting bombs. From 2021-2023 in the minors, he homered once every 23 PAs while slugging .462. That was fine, but it wasn’t enough for him to bust down the door and become an everyday player for the White Sox. He got his first real look in the Majors in 2023 and hit the 34 homers we see above in just 536 PAs, one of the better home run rates in baseball (15.6 PA/HR).
The guy swings the bat extremely hard. He’s able to reach exit velocity heights few others can. His 90th-percentile EV on fly balls was 107.1, the 15th-highest in the league.
Burger Max EV, Brl% By Year
2021: 115.2 | 13.0%
2022: 114.4 | 14.9%
2023: 118.2 | 16.7%
2024: 115.5 | 12.3%
The way he’s become a more consistent hitter is by lowering the K%:
2021: 35.7%
2022: 30.6%
2023: 27.6%
2024: 25.9%
These two seem to go hand-in-hand in a lot of cases. One way a hitter can make more contact is by slowing the bat down. It’s a trade-off most hitters have to make between barrels and strikeouts. Very few hitters have been able to maintain elite Brl% and elite K% at the same time.
It seems like Burger calmed things down in the middle of the season a bit to great benefit. His swing speed was higher earlier in the year and trended down slowly as he got into the second half.
Whatever it was, it worked out - and he had himself a very nice final three months (.275/.342/.524, 17 HR from July 1st on).
I think Burger will be pretty easy to project. He won’t steal bases, but he should manage 25+ homers with relative ease. The lineup around him isn’t the best, and that will hold down the RBI count. He’s far from a priority bat. He’s not going to make any “my guys” lists this year. But you have a reliable power bat that goes late in the draft, and you can plug him in at first base or third base.
Rank
This is the third team I’m doing, so we can start to list some of the comps. Burger is in the same conversation as a Michael Toglia type, but he’s a much safer pick because of the lower K% and the longer history of power production we have.
Projection
654 PA, 80 R, 30 HR, 93 RBI, 2 SB, .258/.316/.474, $10.18 roto value
Connor Norby
Age: 24
Pos: 2B/3B
Norby was the big name in the trade that sent Trevor Rogers to the Orioles. That trade is still confusing. The Orioles did not need Norby, for sure, but it was pretty clear to see that Rogers wouldn’t help them down the stretch - and he didn’t.
Here’s what Norby did in the Majors between the two locations:
194 PA, .236/.294/.438, .732 OPS, 33% K%, 7.7% BB%, 9 HR
We see young hitters struggle with the strikeouts all the time, and Norby fell into that himself. He had a 24% K% rate in the minors between 2023-2024, which wasn’t a huge issue - but it does make that high MLB K% less surprising. Hitters almost always see their strikeout rates bloat at least a few points after being called up to the Majors, and with Norby, it went up 11 points. That’s an issue.
The next thing I look at is the contact rate. He came in at 67%. That tracks with a K% of around 29%. Among hitters with a contact rate between 66% and 68%, Norby had the fourth-highest K% with that 33% mark. He’s very likely to come down at least a few points in K% next year, and I say that without even assuming skill gains.
So we could see Norby get to 27-28% K%. That’s still high, but it would be fine if he hits for a lot of power. So, let’s check that part of his game out.
Brl%: 14.8%
Hard%: 39%
90th EV: 103.3
Bat Speed: 69.8mph
We have a mismatch here. This is a low EV mark but a very high Brl%. This scatter plot shows it:
Remember that there are two components to a barrel.
Exit Velocity
Launch Angle
That means you can get to a high Brl% in a number of ways. You can be a guy like Oneil Cruz, who gets there more with high exit velocity results. Those high EV balls in play have a wide angle range in which they are classified as barrels. As you hit the ball less hard, the angle range narrows. Norby got to his high barrel rate by putting a ton of balls in play in that optimal angle range.
His Sweet Spot% (the percent of balls in play between 8 and 32 degrees) led the league at 48%.
This analysis inspired this article in which I investigated the stickiness of the stat. The conclusion is that Norby will, for certain, fall in Sweet Spot% next season. His 47.8% mark here is the seventh-highest of the last four seasons.
It’s possible he proves himself to be a Freddie Freeman or Luis Arrez type hitter who can consistently deliver high results here, but even if that’s the case - he’s going to be more in the 40-43% range rather than above 45%.
Okay, so what do we know so far?
He struck out a lot
He was very lucky when putting balls in play
It’s not a good combination.
He is fast. He has 94th-percentile sprint speed. However, that has turned into a maximum of 16 steals (between all levels) in these last three full seasons in pro ball.
He’s not an aggressive base stealer. The speed does make it possible for him to be a 25-steal guy at some point, but it would require a change in approach. If he was going to do it, I would think he would have done it already.
There are a lot of years ahead of this guy, but for 2025 - I’m going to be out on the guy. Too many red flags here.
Rank
Projection
650 PA, 81 R, 23 HR, 70 RBI, 11 SB, .232/.298/.406, $9.40 roto value
Xavier Edwards
Age: 25
Pos: SS
Edwards was a bit of a fantasy darling down the stretch in 2024. He stole 31 bases after his call-up on June 7th. That was the fourth-most from June 1st on:
The “30 Steals After June 1st” Club
Ohtani 46
Elly De La Cruz 35
Jose Ramirez 33
Xavier Edwards 31
Brice Turang 31
Victor Robles 30
That alone gets him in the conversation for fantasy next year. Steals are extremely valuable in standard rotisserie fantasy leagues as 20% of the offensive categories. Bonus points if we can find some power or batting average here, so let’s take a look at that. Here’s what he did with the Majors last season:
303 PA, .328/.397/.423, 1 HR, 31 SB, 17.2% K%, 10.9% BB%
So it’s a checkmark on the batting average but a big fat crater on the home runs front. More numbers!
BABIP: .396
xBA: .247
xwOBA: .297
Contact%: 87%
GB%: 52%
LD%: 27%
FB%: 19%
Sweet Spot: 39%
He posted a good sweet spot rate, but he was barely hitting the ball with a 90th-percentile exit velocity mark of 98.0. Only ten hitters put at least 200 balls in play with a 90th-percentile EV mark below 100.
The saving grace is that his line drive rate was three points above average. If you’re hitting balls this softly, most of your fly balls are going to be caught - so you have to rack up hits via the line drive.
The .328 batting average was a total mirage. He led the league in BABIP (.398) and in xBA-BA differential. Check out this article I wrote for more on that. He will not hit anywhere near .300 over a significant sample size.
With the Marlins team context, we’re essentially looking at Edwards as a one or one-and-a-half-category guy. He’s extremely good in that one category, so he can be a “steals savior” pick in the later rounds on team builds where you ignored steals early on - but other than that, I’m not interested. I’m guessing the price will be too high.
Rank
There are a lot of these steals-only types, but Edwards is the first one I’m ranking. To get ahead of ourselves, Brice Turang and Jacob Young are good comps.
Projection
636 PA, 83 R, 8 HR, 52 RBI, 36 SB, .270/.340/.372, $7.44 roto value
Otto Lopez
Age: 26
Pos: 2B
This is another example of a lesser-known prospect who came up and played a good amount last year in the Majors with a good bit of success. In these cases, I like to start by looking back at their minor league careers. From 2023-2024 in the minors:
395 PA, .275/.330/.380, .710 OPS, 16% K%, 7% BB%, 4 HR, 13 SB
That’s a really ugly line, and it would not have had us excited to pick the guy up midseason. But he did have a good amount of success in his time at the highest level in 2024:
433 PA, .270/.313/.377, .690 OPS, 17% K%, 6% BB%, 6 HR, 20 SB
So he hit for a decent batting average, stole a bunch of bases, and didn’t kill you in homers. The most surprising things to me are:
His K% did not come up significantly against MLB pitchers
His home run rate improved after reaching the Majors
Those are red flags. It’s hard to believe a hitter can truly come up and immediately improve his stats while facing tougher pitching. So, let’s look at the indicators:
Cont%: 78%
Brl%: 5.1%
xBA: .265
xwOBA: .316
BABIP: .316
90th Percentile EV: 104.3
Sweet Spot: 32%
GB%: 54%
The contact rate is high enough to believe in a lower K%. I don’t believe much in the power. His bat speed is low (28th percentile), he didn’t pull the ball much, and he hit a bunch of ground balls (54% in MLB, 50% in MiLB).
He did hit a ball at 110 in AAA and 108.8 in the Majors, and his 90th-percentile EV mark was close to what we want at 104.3.
We’re getting too far into the weeds here. The most telling stat is that the guy has hit just 18 homers in 1,760 professional plate appearances. That’s one homer every 97 PAs. That can and will improve with age and experience, but it’s not often you see someone go from a 100 PA/HR to something like 30, which is what we really want for fantasy.
It’s late October when I’m writing this, so we have the entire offseason to go. I don’t think it’s safe to say that Lopez has a locked-in spot in this lineup, so he could become fully irrelevant as the Marlins fill out their roster ahead of the 2025 opening.
I wouldn’t be excited about Lopez. At best, he’s a decent batting average bat with 25-30 steals and 5-10 homers. That’s too easily replaceable to draft.
Rank
Projection
422 PA, 46 R, 10 HR, 46 RBI, 15 SB, .276/.323/.414, $3.44 roto value
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