As the offseason drags on and we see more and more eligible players getting snatched up by teams willing to open their wallets while the Marlins remain silent, hope begins to dissipate that this will, in fact, be the season when Sherman coughs up the dough. I don’t necessarily think that this is the worst thing in the world as I don’t really think we need to be treating 2026 as the target year anyways. More importantly, I don’t want to think in terms of target years at all anymore; I am far more interested in seeing us take our time under the relatively new Bendix regime to lay the groundwork for the Fish to be perennial contenders than to go all-in on a season in the somewhat immediate future and blow out our prospects and capital for suboptimal results.
This approach is not satisfying for the understandably downtrodden Marlins fan that just wants to see us win another ring- I get that, but the last thing that I (and I imagine many other Fish-heads) want to see is for us to get that ring and then subsequently blow it for two straight decades. See, nobody ever thinks of the Brewers or the Rays and thinks “those teams suck” the way they do the Marlins and the Marlins have actually won two championships over the Rays’ and Brewers’ zero. That’s because those teams have prioritized long-term optimization over short-sighted ring chases and it would take a shock to the core of both of those teams’ rosters and exceptional farm systems to take them out of the contender conversation.
I say all of this to make this point: I would be fine with the Marlins spending relatively little this season in order to focus on bolstering the farm and giving position players much-needed reps at the Major League level. For example, more than enough has been said about Agustin Ramirez’s defensive capabilities in the catcher position- I don’t intend to pile on any more than I already have, but the organization has made it clear that they view Ramirez as a catcher and that he will be getting plenty of reps in that position- even with Joe Mack waiting in the wings. While many have scoffed at this notion (myself included), I understand the utility of pushing a player to be a viable defensive asset when the bat has this much potential at his age and I understand that the Marlins are in a very important transitional period in which we can afford to take some losses in exchange for the possibility of growth for potential long-term assets like Ramirez.
Which brings me to the main point: the Marlins need a first baseman. I think we all get by now that the Marlins are desperately in need of competence in that position for the 2026 season and beyond after the paltry season from the Marlins’ primary first baseman, Eric Wagaman in 2025, but unless the front office is going to pull the trigger on someone like Yandy Diaz or Pete Alonso (that one is my pipe dream, but let me have it), it would seem as though we will be looking at internal options. We could, of course, run it back with Wagaman- it would be a very Marlins move and his offensive numbers still show him batting under his potential so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this. Alternatively, we’ve also heard murmurs that Heriberto Hernandez and Griffin Conine could be seeing reps at first and, while this doesn’t feel crazy given how much we like their bats, neither one is a seasoned defensive first baseman by any metric so it feels like a stretch. Liam Hicks took reps at first last season and was serviceable, but I don’t think that many of us are particularly excited about that option as he really does just feel like a placeholder there. As you comb through the farm system, it doesn’t seem like any of the established AAA corner infielders are ready for the majors be it Jacob Berry, Nathan Martorella, or Johnny Olmstead.
But there’s one option that seems to have fallen off of a lot of our radars until somewhat recently- someone who has actually been on the Marlins 40-man roster for a while: Deyvison De Los Santos who I will be referring to going forward as DDLS for brevity’s sake.
DDLS was signed as an international free agent by the Diamondbacks in 2021, but because of the cancellation of the minor league season in 2020, wouldn’t play a pro game until 2021, when he joined the Arizona Complex League Diamondbacks. His strong hit tool would help him ascend the ranks quickly as he found his way all the way to AA the following year. In 2023, he was picked up by the Guardians in the Rule 5 draft, but was returned before the season even began at which point he would play AAA ball until being traded to Miami in 2024 along with shortstop Andrew Pintar for Marlins pitcher, A.J. Puk.
Fans were understandably high on DDLS when this happened and it wasn’t an uncommon sentiment that he would be a major player in the Marlins’ 2025 season. Yet that moment never came. From the trade all the way through the end of the 2025 season, we would see DDLS fail to break out in Jacksonville with the Marlins AAA affiliate. In 2024, his OPS dropped from .926 with the Reno Aces to .743 with the Jumbo Shrimp. By the end of his 2025 season, it had plummeted all the way to .674. Though DDLS is blessed with superb exit velocity numbers (even boasting a 100th percentile Max Exit Velocity of 118.5mph) and a plus hard-hit percentage, his pull was weak, he had a sub-optimal barrel rate, and he was one of the worst on the team in strikeouts, walks, chase, whiff, zone contact, and swinging strikes.
When comparing these stats to his numbers in 2024, the most notable dip came from his failure to barrel which went from 11.8% all the way down to 5.9%, thus leaving many of his batted balls in the infield or shallow outfield while harshly diminishing his slug. Just look at his spray charts courtesy of Prospect Savant to see for yourself how much less bang for his buck that DDLS got on his balls in play from ’24 (left) to ’25 (right).
Regardless of that, it’s not crazy to wonder if it would be worth giving him a cup of coffee with the Fish this season to see if he could be an improvement upon our current set of circumstances at first. Just as I was starting to get on board the DDLS train for the second time, a thought occurred to me: why wasn’t DDLS with the recently crowned National AAA champions during their playoffs run? There were certainly Jacksonville players with lower floors and ceilings who did play. He wasn’t reported injured. So why wasn’t he ripping dingers with the boys?
No amount of statistical data could give me a super clear-cut answer here so I decided to get on the ground and talk to someone who might have more insight. In the pursuit of more information, I talked to an anonymous Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp season ticket-holder, friend of the AAA front office, and someone who I just generally consider a ball-knower who was able to provide some clarity here.
First in response to my questions about DDLS’ viability as a potential Major League first baseman, the source said “DDLS is average at best at first. He has range issues when it comes to throws to first.” They went on to say “[DDLS] doesn’t seem to know how to cover the bad and come off for a bad throw.”
Defensive concerns at what is widely considered to be one of the easier defensive positions in baseball are a bummer to hear in the context of a player whom many of us are contending with as a serious prospect, but these seemed to be the least of my source’s concerns as they went on to describe a much deeper issue: DDLS’ attitude towards his position saying that he’s “the last one on the field and the last one off as he walks both ways”.
But coming back around to my original inquiry, there was a much more concerning report from the source who alleged that DDLS was actually suspended for the playoffs by manager David Carpenter.
I will preface what I say next by clarifying that these are just reports from one person on the ground that I am relaying to readers, but that I cannot verify these reports myself so we should treat everything here as allegations instead of as facts.
The source said “Last season, while on the road, [DDLS] tried to hit [Jakob] Marsee with a bat after an argument in the clubhouse. Rumors the year before [were that] he got into it with Troy Johnston as well.” going on to say that they have heard from multiple coaches and players that DDLS is “not a good teammate”.
These sorts of things are what I would consider to be intangibles that go beyond a player’s performance on the diamond and, if these allegations are true, it begs the question: can Deyvison De Los Santos be a viable option for a club that seems to be very dependent on the power of friendship? I mean, it doesn’t take much to realize that the team in 2025 was a group of feel-good vibes guys being managed by a feel-good vibes guy who were thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments and successes of their peers. This is the sort of intangible that I would deem crucial to the continued success of the team and it seems like we’re asking for trouble if we’re willing to potentially jeopardize that just to roll the dice on a player that has upside, but has thus far failed to deliver.
I can’t really know if Deyvison De Los Santos can be salvaged from over a year of poor performances and “clubhouse cancer” accusations, but I’d hate to see this team lose that spark that they found last season in an effort to find out. For now, only time will tell.