“You try to get the college bats early.” The Miami Marlins didn’t land any with their top three picks of the 2024 MLB Draft, but Frankie Piliere took a drastically different approach in his second year running the organization’s amateur scouting operation. The Marlins selected six consecutive position players from power-conference schools to kick off their 2025 class. All 21 of their draftees came from the college ranks, with north of 90% of their bonus pool dollars projected to go to hitters. Such a distribution is totally unprecedented in Marlins history.
And yet, Piliere attributes this outcome to “the coincidences of a draft board.” Had the teams around them passed on desirable high school alternatives, the Marlins would have pivoted, he says.
Most of Miami’s 11 pitcher picks will come cheaply because of the control issues they exhibited as amateurs. Piliere believes that his colleagues in player development are well-equipped to unlock their potential:Â “We think we can do a lot of things with pitchers, especially with pitchers with big fastballs. If they have baseline things that we like, we think we can help build off of that.”
As news of player signing bonuses trickle in throughout the rest of this month, I will be updating this tracker. Without any preps who need to be bought out of their college commitments, there is a high likelihood of the Marlins signing every pick.
Down on the farm, FCL Marlins lost, 5-0, despite brilliance from Juan De La Cruz (4.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 7 K). De La Cruz has struck out 41.0% of opposing batters since his latest demotion to the FCL to go along with a 1.25 ERA; it just hasn’t translated to the Low-A level, where he has an underwhelming 18.8% strikeout rate over parts of three seasons. DSL Miami beat DSL Marlins, 5-3. Diego Godoy continues to have a great MiLB debut season, lowering his ERA to 2.04 with a fantastic ratio of 26 strikeouts to three walks.
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🔷 Kyle Stowers was named National League Player of the Week again. He previously received the honor during the week of April 28. Cool nugget from Marlins Communications: the only other players in franchise history to win it multiple times in a single season were Miguel Cabrera (2007), José Fernández (2013) and Giancarlo Stanton (2017).
🔷 “Happy birthday, Rob Brantly! You’ve been designated for assignment.” Ouch. That’s the present Brantly received from the Marlins on Monday while celebrating his 36th b-day. It is the least surprising roster move of the season, to be fair. Brantly has been a glorified coach for the Fish dating back to spring training. He spent the past week playing rehab games with Triple-A Jacksonville, filling in for Futures Game selection Joe Mack and injured backup Brian Navarreto. This was the inevitable outcome once his playing services were no longer required at the AAA or MLB levels. Brantly will undoubtedly clear waivers and remain with the Marlins organization.
🔷 Stowers holds the top spot in the first edition of the official Marlins White Boy of the Year rankings, followed by Janson Junk, Lake Bachar, Karson Milbrandt and Stephen Strom of Marlins Radio.
🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, longtime Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg has reached an agreement in principle to sell the franchise for about $1.7 billion to a group led by Patrick Zalupski. The transaction could be completed as soon as September. Cal Raleigh became the first catcher to ever win MLB’s Home Run Derby. He edged out Junior Caminero in the finals. Old friend Jazz Chisholm Jr. had by far the weakest showing among derby contestants, homering only three times.
🔷 Up next: the MLB All-Star Game at 8:00 p.m. ET. FOCO has unveiled its annual Marlins All-Star Bobbles on Parade bobblehead, which is now available to pre-order here.
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