June 10th: Claimed Tom Cosgrove off waivers from the Padres. He was added to their 40-man last year and was just a roster crunch casualty - they’ve had a ton of injuries that necessitated some call-ups, and he was the odd man out. He’s a lefty with starter stuff but not starter stamina - a 55 fastball & 65/70 curveball with a serviceable change. He’ll be a reliever with some length in the bullpen.
June 13th: Jazz Chisholm Jr was activated from the IL, but Jesus Aguilar took his place on it - Aguilar’s been nursing a quadriceps strain for a few games now and the time off will help him get over it. Chisholm resumes his play at 2B, Garrett Cooper will slide from DH to 1B to cover Aguilar, and some combo of Joey Wendle & Willians Astudillo will cover DH for the next couple weeks.
June 26th: Brian Anderson was hit on the hand by a Carlos Carrasco pitch in an eventual 6-5 win over the Mets. Unfortunately, his thumb has been fractured and he’ll be out for 5-6 weeks. More roster shuffling commences - this time, Joey Wendle will slide over to cover 3B while the organization’s #5 prospect JJ Bleday will get his first MLB call-up to cover DH while the team waits for some bats to recover. Jesus Aguilar still has lingering quad issues but is hopefully only a week or two away, so it’ll probably be a quick stay in the majors for Bleday.
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So remember how Jackie Daytona was on the fence at the end of May, waiting to see how the next month would play out before he chose a path for the deadline?
Well, the team definitely made the choice for him this month:
A 9-18 June “highlighted” by a 12 game losing streak, being swept by the Nationals, Astros, & Phillies in succession - bookended by losing 3 of 4 to start the streak against the Giants and losing 3 of 4 against the Mets after breaking the streak. They did a decent job closing out the month with three straight series wins, but the team really came back down to earth in June - and the numbers back it up:
The offense regressed back down into one of the bottom feeders in the NL, and the pitchers struggled to - especially their starters. The pluses are the bullpen keeping it together and the team’s ability to limit walks and home runs - these are things a young team can build off of!
Checking in on June’s stats:
Jorge Soler started turning it around - he drew some walks and actually got on base at a solid clip while maintaining his strong power numbers. Willians Astudillo also knocked the ball around pretty well in his opportunities - even with minimal power, he’s putting up solid numbers (and only 1 K in 49 PAs!) Avisail Garcia really fell apart this month, and Brian Anderson wasn’t doing much before getting hurt. There’s really not a ton of offense here and it’s getting to the point where Jackie Daytona is going to have to start moving on from some of these guys.
The bullpen has been solid - Dylan Floro put up solid numbers, Tanner Scott has been a revelation at the back end of the ‘pen, and even new addition Tom Cosgrove put up some solid numbers. The starters really struggled - Pablo Lopez & Trevor Rogers couldn’t keep the ball in the yard in their starts, and Sandy Alcantara had a rough month with an 0fer in his 5 starts. Sixto Sanchez replaced Elieser Hernandez in the rotation and was better than his numbers suggest - he got rocked in his first two starts back but he put up 14.1 scoreless innings in his last 2 starts before the calendar flipped.
The hard part is there’s really not a ton of options on the farm to bring up as reinforcements. Max Meyer has a 3.67 ERA and 9.5 K/9 in Double-A, but you’d want a guy to dominate that level before skipping him up to the big leagues. JJ Bleday had 20 HRs in Triple-A and is getting a chance to show what he’s got while injuries bang up the main club. And beyond the top prospects, there’s a couple of older depth guys like Charles Labanc (.325/.378/604 with 10 HR in 177 PAs) and Bryson Brigman (.361/.448/602 with 6 HRs in 126 PAs) tearing up Triple-A, but those sample sizes are small enough to give any GM pause.
Even with a winning record, it feels like these Marlins are stuck in a spot where they have to sell. It might feel odd to say that while they’re still currently in the 3rd wild card spot on July 1st, but unless the bats can start picking it up, this team just doesn’t look like it has the horses to make an October run just yet.