May 2nd: Jesus Sanchez goes on the IL with Back Tightness after tweaking something trying to throw out a runner going 1st to 3rd in the 8th inning of an eventual 5-3 loss to the Diamondbacks in 10. He’ll be gone for about 2 weeks, and is in danger of losing his starting job when he gets back - his .162/.269/.235 line in CF is just not enough production. Bryan De La Cruz will step in to CF for the time being, with 26 year old Brian Miller(.306/.404/.367 in 115 Triple-A PAs) coming up to fill the roster spot.
May 22nd: As predicted, Jesus Sanchez came back from the IL to a backup role, with Bryan De La Cruz still raking. Unfortunately, he got his starting job back today as De La Cruz suffered a high ankle sprain tracking down an Oscar Mercado line drive in a 4-0 loss to the Braves. Bryan had been leading off, hitting .380/.430/.576 with 3 HR & 17 RBI in 101 PAs, so losing him is going to hurt. Brian Miller is back on the shuttle from Jacksonville to be the 4th/5th outfielder again.
May 29th: Another blow to the lineup as Jazz Chisholm Jr. will miss 2 weeks with back soreness, aggravated on a defensive play during a wild 13-11 win over the Braves. Joey Wendle will slide into the starting 2B role, with the surprising Wilfredo Tovar (.293/.337/.468 with a professional career-best 9 HR in 206 Triple-A PAs) having his contract selected to come to Miami and take over Wendle’s super-sub role.
May 30th: Not Miami news, but still notable:
Torkelson becomes the 19th player all-time, and first since JD Martinez in 2017, to have a 4 homer game. Congrats to him!
Miami kept it up in May, going 17-10 for the month to lift their overall record to 30-17:
The bats came alive, as you can tell by a few football scores up there, and ended on a high note with a 6 game winning streak that included grabbing both games against their in-state rivals in Tampa Bay before going up to Truist Park and returning the favor from the week before with a road sweep of the Braves. The stats continue to show this isn’t really a mirage:
The pitching took a minor step back this month but still has a ton of top-5 placements; the bats crept up a little more towards league average with a strong May. The Pythagorean Pace shows that the Marlins have been a little lucky - two games up with their real life record, possibly aided by a 5-2 record in extra innings and an 11-7 split in one-run games. Still - this team looks like a contending team through the first third of the season. They’ll need to keep it up because the NL East has been a true dogfight - even at 30-17, the Marlins are in 3rd behind the 34-18 Mets and 33-18(!) Nationals - and the defending champs in Atlanta are still in the mix at 25-25. Hell, even the Phillies aren’t all that far off the pace at 24-27. This division is going to be tough for whoever pulls it out at the end of the year.
Bryan De La Cruz continues to be the engine making the Marlins go, as you can see from his .375/.417/.536 line in his truncated May. Some of the other bats that struggled in April started to pick it up, too - Jesus Aguilar had a strong May, as did Avisail Garcia and Jazz Chisholm Jr. The most confounding player has to be Jorge Soler - he’s striking out a ton still, and barely hitting the ball, but when he makes contact that ball is traveling. 12 of his 27 base hits have left the yard, and that power surge has kept him at a nearly league-average OPS+(99) despite his .180 batting average and .267 OBP. Manager Don Mattingly dropped him to 7th in the order to take a little less pressure off of him, and the hope is he’ll continue being a power threat in the bottom third of the order.
As the above schedule showed, the pitching suffered a little bit this month - most surprising was staff ace Sandy Alcantara putting up a 7.90 ERA in 5 starts. Pablo Lopez continues to churn along a very solid season, though, and Trevor Rogers came up big with 44 Ks in 33.1 IP over his 6 starts. Elieser Hernandez continues having issues with the longball, though, and with Sixto Sanchez making his 3rd rehab start on May 30th, his time in the rotation is seemingly about to come to an end.
June is going to be a real decider for the Marlins - there’s not a ton of help coming from the farm if they want to make a playoff push (their best Triple-A bats are Yoenis Cespedes, Lewin Diaz, & JJ Bleday - all 1B/corner OF/DH types) so it’s going to start to get realllll interesting in these parts come July.