Miami Marlins 2024 preview
Spring Training was not kind to the Miami Marlins at all. With Sandy Alcantara already out for the season after Tommy John surgery, Braxton Garrett, Eury Perez, and Edward Cabrera all came down with arm injuries. For a team that had some very clear negative regression indicators anyway, this was a worst-case scenario type of situation.
Miami went 84-78, but did so with a -57 run differential. By Pythagorean Win-Loss, this was more like a 75-87 team. Miami’s BaseRuns record wasn’t as damning at 77-85, but this is a team that had no business being in the playoffs. The Phillies disposed of them 2-0 in the NL Wild Card Round after the Marlins became just the 11th team with a negative run differential to make the playoffs and had the worst run differential ever for a playoff team.
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Ironically, the Diamondbacks were another one, and they went all the way to the World Series, but the question in Miami’s case is – how does such an anomaly happen? Well, the Marlins were 33-14 in one-run games. They actually went 53-39 in the first half before going 31-39 in the second half, but they went 17-10 in September with a +1 run differential to make the postseason.
The manner in which they overachieved and the bevy of pitching injuries are all very much present in their odds for the upcoming season.
2024 Miami Marlins Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Mar. 20)
World Series: +8000
NL Pennant: +4000
NL East: +1700
Win Total: 78.5 (+100/-120)
Make Playoffs: Yes +250 / No -300
Miami Marlins Preview: Offense
With all of the pitching injuries, this group is going to have to carry more of the burden this season. The Marlins finished 20th in wRC+ at 94, with their numbers graded on a fairly steep curve because Marlins Park is not a very good offensive venue. The offense was driven by a high batting average, as Miami hit .259 as a team. That ranked fourth, trailing the Braves, Rangers, and Rays, who were all top-five offenses overall.
However, the Marlins also had the fourth-lowest BB% in baseball at 7.1%, better than only the Nationals, Royals, and White Sox. As a result, despite the high BA, the Marlins ranked 19th in OBP. Even though they only hit 166 homers to rank 23rd, they were 19th in SLG because of all the base hits.
What the team stats don’t really illustrate is that Luis Arraez was the main reason why the Marlins excelled in the K% and BA departments. Arraez hit .354 by carrying a .362 BABIP and only struck out in 5.5% of his plate appearances. He had 203 hits and just 34 strikeouts. The last player with at least 600 PA and fewer than 35 strikeouts was Placido Polanco in 2007.
Unfortunately, the contact quality for Arraez actually dropped and his .362 BABIP was easily the highest of his career in a non-COVID year. I still expect him to be a guy with a very high batting average and a very low K%, but the projection systems put him between a 109 and 120 wRC+. He had a career-best 132 wRC+ last season after a career-best 131 wRC+ the previous season. He is a unicorn capable of breaking the system, but I do think his batted ball luck regresses some.
Jake Burger is back for another year with the Marlins after coming over from the White Sox. He slashed .303/.355/.505 in 217 PA with a 131 wRC+ after the trade. Josh Bell was also productive with a 119 wRC+ in 224 plate appearances after he was acquired from the Guardians. Neither Burger nor Bell project to repeat that this season. Unfortunately, Jorge Soler and his 36 homers are gone, leaving the Marlins with even less of a power dimension for this season.
There is hope that 26-year-old Jazz Chisholm Jr. will stay healthy and fill that void, as he hit 19 homers in just 383 PA last season, to go along with 22 stolen bases, but he’s played a season’s worth of games over the last two seasons. Jesus Sanchez is another guy that the Marlins acquired from somebody else and he had 14 homers in 402 PA. Beyond that, though, the Marlins offense looks pretty below average across the board.
I’d expect both Burger and Arraez to regress. Chisholm may be able to pick up some of the slack, but this is not an imposing lineup. Even though Soler was a bit on the high side strikeout-wise, both Sanchez and Chisholm have holes in their swings, so I could see the team’s K% tick up this season as well.
Miami Marlins Preview: Pitching
It is impossible to overstate what the loss of Alcantara means to this team. He’s been a fixture in this rotation since the 2019 season and had made at least 32 starts in each of the last three COVID years before undergoing Tommy John surgery after 28 starts last season. He threw a career-high 228.2 innings in 2022 and he’s a guy that consistently sits around 98 mph. There has been a lot of talk recently about what the human body can endure from a throwing standpoint after some comments from Chris Bassitt that humans weren’t meant to throw harder than 91 or 92.
I won’t pretend to know if he’s right or not, but Alcantara’s max effort combined with his workload certainly put a lot of strain on his arm and he’ll miss the entire season after undergoing TJS in October of last year.
It was announced on Mar. 16 that Perez would undergo some testing on his barking elbow. The 6-foot-8, 20-year-old wunderkind made his MLB debut last season with 91.1 innings and a 3.15 ERA. He had a 4.11 FIP due to a high home run rate, but he struck out 28.9% of opposing batters after making the leap from Double-A. As the hours ticked by without any official announcement, everybody got more and more concerned and it seems like even if it isn’t a season-ending injury, he’ll certainly miss a good bit of time.
Garrett had shoulder soreness early in camp and he’s a guy that I would watch very closely. He threw a career-high 159.2 innings and all of them came at the high-stress MLB level. One oddity about Garrett is that he was far worse at pitcher-friendly Marlins Park than he was on the road, as he allowed a .337 wOBA with a .463 SLG and a 4.46 ERA at home compared to a .275 wOBA with a .373 SLG and a 2.85 ERA on the road in nearly the same number of innings. I could see that flip a bit this season, but hopefully he simply stays healthy.
Cabrera faced 434 batters last season. He struck out 118, walked 66, and gave up 11 homers. He’s a three true outcomes pitcher and a really hard guy to gauge because of that high walk rate. He isn’t the only one. The Marlins are putting a lot on the shoulders of A.J. Puk, who has not made a start at the MLB level. He has 142 relief appearances with a 3.72 ERA and a 3.59 FIP, but zero starts. He has looked outstanding in Spring Training, but hasn’t been a full-time starter since 2017 in Double-A.
Color me skeptical with Puk, especially in terms of how many innings he can actually provide. He’s a huge dude at 6-foot-7 and 248 pounds, so he has the frame of a guy who can be a workhorse, but it’s a big change. Then there’s another guy to be skeptical about in Trevor Rogers, who only made four starts and threw 18 innings last season. He’s been brought along slowly in camp. He did miss last season due to a torn lat and not an arm injury, but he’s had his share of those as well.
Continuing on the theme of pitchers with iffy profiles, de facto ace Jesus Luzardo was awesome last season with a 3.58 ERA and a 3.55 FIP over 178.2 innings. He also threw 178.2 innings, which was about 70 more than he threw last season. The promise and potential have always been there with Luzardo, but the health hasn’t been. He made 32 starts last season. He made 21 in 2022 across three levels. From 2017-21, he made a total of 78 starts.
Red flag after red flag with the Marlins pitching staff. It’s a shame because the talent level is legitimately insane here, but some guys are already hurt and others are likely to be during the season.
As far as the bullpen goes, one-time hot prospect Sixto Sanchez will try to make it as a reliever. The weird thing about Miami’s exceptional record in one-run games is that the bullpen finished 21st in ERA at 4.37, but they were 13th in FIP. Puk moving to the rotation could hurt, but Tanner Scott and Andrew Nardi were both terrific last season.
Miami Marlins Player to Watch
SP Jesus Luzardo
I could have gone with any of the Marlins pitchers, but I opted for Luzardo for a few reasons. First, he had massive home/road splits and the days he pitched really happened to work out in his favor. He had a 2.99 ERA with a .283 wOBA against in 108.1 innings at home compared to a 4.48 ERA and a .343 wOBA against on the road over 70.1 innings. He made 19 starts at home compared to 13 on the road.
Next, it was said that Luzardo was trying to work on his endurance and getting deeper into games. That usually comes with learning how to pitch to contact, as opposed to going for strikeouts in hopes of increasing pitch equity. Luzardo also saw some pretty gnarly times through the order splits, as he allowed a .268 wOBA and a 1.95 ERA the first time through, a .315 wOBA and a 4.48 ERA the second time through, and a .364 wOBA and a 5.15 ERA the third time through.
Lastly, the health, man. It’s still a thing. Luzardo’s K% dropped from 29.1% in the first half to 26.5% in the second half. His BB% spiked from 6.1% to 9.4%. Even when he had a good month of September, he had a 9.0% BB%. He allowed more pull-side contact, more fly balls, and more home runs per fly ball in the second half as he reached new thresholds. By September, his fastball velo and spin rate had both dipped. I don’t think it was an injury, just fatigue, but he’s under the microscope this season.
Miami Marlins Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
As the holder of a Marlins season win total Under ticket last season, I feel like I want to go back to the well again. I do think this version is pretty clearly better than the 2021 and 2022 versions that won 67 and 69 games, respectively, but as I mentioned, last year’s team should have won 75-77 games, which would clear this number. Last year’s team also had a healthy Alcantara.
There’s certainly a chance that all of the starters perform at a high level and stay healthy. It would be a surprise, especially with the track record of health for the Marlins, but it could happen. Even if it does, I’m not sure that the ceiling for this team is that much higher than what the win total line states. Obviously, there’s the chance for an outlier, say, like, going 33-14 in one-run games.
But, I don’t think that will be the case. I think every team in the NL East is as good or better than last year’s version. The track record for overachievers in the following season with that bad of a run differential can’t be very good. It’s an Under team once again for me.
Pick: Under 78.5
Get all of our preseason coverage in the 2024 MLB Betting Guide.
