The Marlins Are Showing How Well Staying Internal Can Work

In today’s game, very rarely do you find a successful team that is composed of mainly home-grown talent. With all of the money that has been thrown around in free agency, the blockbuster trades involving players tied to large contracts, and the overall rate of movement in the league, the teams that mainly rely on their ability to scout and develop rarely find themselves on the positive side of the .500 mark.

However, this Miami Marlins team is finding ways to exploit the notion that you need to spend to find success.

Though the Marlins have been able to show flashes over the past couple of years, staying alive in the National League playoff race up until the very end of the 2025 season, it has been quite some time since we have seen a Marlins team be THIS successful.

Aside from their recent skid heading into the All-Star break, the Marlins were right in the thick of things, tied for second place in the National League East and for the second Wild Card spot. Even now, after losing 12 games in a row and ending the slide with an epic walk-off win against the Phillies, the Marlins still find themselves just one game under .500 and two games back from the final wild-card spot heading into July 28th.

This is a Marlins team that entered the 2026 season 29^th in payroll, accounting for $81.2 million total on the Major League roster. They made one notable signing this offseason, inking closer Pete Fairbanks to a one-year, $13.1 million deal, and he is the second-highest paid player, just behind Sandy Alcantara and his $17.3 million. The winning nature of this team, derived mainly from home-grown talent, is very reminiscent of the 2003 team that was pieced together by inexpensive veterans and players in the early parts of their careers.

How Have They Done It?

It is truly remarkable when you look at just how this Marlins team has been built. Just take a look at the typical everyday lineup:

C- Joe Mack (2021 CB-A Draft Pick)
1B- Kyle Stowers (Acquired from Baltimore)
2B- Xavier Edwards (Acquired from Tampa Bay)
3B- Leo Jimenez (Acquired from Toronto)
SS- Otto Lopez (Claimed off Waivers)
LF- Heriberto Hernandez (MiLB Free Agent Signing)
CF- Jakob Marsee (Acquired from San Diego)
RF- Griffin Conine (Acquired from Toronto)
DH- Liam Hicks (Rule 5 Selection)

Aside from Mack being drafted by the team back in 2021, every other player has spent time on another team’s depth chart during their career. For the majority of them, they were seen as nothing but depth before they got to the Marlins. Even for someone like Stowers, who was regarded as a top prospect during his time with the Baltimore Orioles, was cast aside and seen as a “throw-in” in the deal that sent Trevor Rogers to the Orioles for Connor Norby and Stowers.

It doesn’t stop there for the Marlins behind the plate, because Hicks has continued to show the baseball world that he is for real.

Hicks was taken as the second overall pick of the 2024 Rule 5 Draft after the Tigers had decided not to protect him. He had originally been acquired by Detroit at the deadline in a trade that sent Carson Kelly to the Texas Rangers. This is just another example of just how locked-in the Marlins scouting department has been over the past couple of years.

In his 214 career games played over the past year and a half, Hicks has a .263/.352/.392 line, hitting to a 108 wRC+, generated 2.5 fWAR, and continues to walk (10.2%) about just as much as he strikes out (12.1%). This was a huge find for the Marlins at the time, and continues to pay dividends today as he continues to slot into the top of the order daily.

You then take a look at the starting rotation and really start to believe that what the Marlins’ development staff has done is remarkable.

Alcantara was seen as one of the game’s top pitching prospects in all of baseball when he was in the Cardinals’ system. After a failed stint with their big-league team, the Cardinals were okay moving him to Miami in a package that netted them Marcell Ozuna. After just one season spent with the Marlins’ pitching development staff, he started to showcase the talent that had him labeled as a top prospect, eventually leading to the unanimous National League Cy Young Award winner in 2022.

By this point, we should all be well-informed about just how much of a roller coaster ride the career of Max Meyer has been. After being selected third overall in the 2020 draft, it was almost immediately clear that he was deemed “high-risk” and destined to be a backend of the bullpen arm. Well, after battling through struggles and injuries, Meyer now finds himself pitching like one of the best pitchers in the National League and fresh off his first All-Star Game selection.

To this point in the season, Meyer has a 2.68 ERA across a career-high 111 innings.

Coming up third in the rotation is another pitcher who came out of nowhere, pitching in the Dominican Summer League and skyrocketed up prospect rankings, eventually being named the top pitcher in all of the Minor Leagues across multiple platforms.

Though he has not been able to return to the ace-like potential yet, we have all witnessed just how dominant Eury Perez has been at times throughout his career. Aside from the imposing six-foot-eight figure standing on the mound, it’s the dominant, above-average offerings that have made him must-watch TV since he made his debut back in 2023.

I don’t think I have to dig too deep into the bullpen. Aside from Fairbanks and maybe John King, I’d bet that there aren’t many people who could name, or even recognize, some of the arms they have been throwing out there. That’s what makes their success all the more impressive.

On offense, it is almost comical.

I already briefly touched on Mack earlier, who has quickly blossomed into one of the better young catchers in baseball. He has shown that his talent on both sides of the ball has translated seamlessly over to the major league level.

Looking across the diamond, getting Stowers as a secondary piece to the Rogers trade has been the icing on the cake for this team. After being named to his first All-Star game last season, Stowers spent the majority of the start of this season battling back from a nagging hamstring injury he sustained during spring training.

His bat is slowly starting to come back around, but the more impressive thing is that it was he who ended up being the outfielder who converted to first base, and not Griffin Conine. After the failed Christopher Morel experiment, having Stowers be able to slide in has made all the difference for this lineup.

The acquisition of Xavier Edwards was essentially a gift from the Rays. It was essentially a trade that didn’t amount to much outside of Edwards, who is now battling Ketel Marte and Brice Turang to see who is the best second baseman in the National League.

His double-play partner needs no introduction. Lopez has been downright insane in 2026. Currently sitting atop Major League Baseball with a .331 batting average, the twice-DFA’d shortstop has entrenched himself as a big league regular and one of the better hitters in baseball to this point. FanGraphs had him projected to be a 2.2 fWAR player this season. Here we sit today, and Lopez has already accumulated 4.5 fWAR. It is wild just how good he’s been.

Marsee and Conine were both acquired via trade by the Marlins. Marsee was a part of the package that sent Luis Arraez over to San Diego, and Conine was the player to be named later in the deal that had utilityman Jonathan Villar sent to Toronto back in 2020. Both of them took big strides in their development once the Marlins got their hands on them, and both have proven that they can hold their own in a big league lineup on a nightly basis. Heriberto Hernandez was brought in as a minor league free agent prior to last season and, after not really doing much in the minors to stand out amongst his peers, the Marlins called him up for his debut, and all he did was generate 1.3 fWAR in the 87 games he played in 2025.

Is This a Sustainable System?

Sustainability is the key to this game.

What the Marlins have been able to accomplish over the past couple of seasons cannot be dismissed or deemed a “fluke.” The game of baseball is largely dependent on just how good a team’s development staff can be. They’ve even put themselves in a position to be true buyers at this year’s deadline.

Yes, the Dodgers spend a lot of money, but that doesn’t always amount to wins *looking at you, New York Mets*. They may have a payroll that ranks amongst the top of the league, but their farm system ranks just as high as the rest of the teams in baseball. Remember how the Houston Astros dynasty came to be? It was years of coming in last place, then hitting on draft picks, developing them, and a combination of timely trades and signing key free agents to put them over the top. This Miami front office’s philosophy closely resembles what those Astros teams were able to do.

I never hesitate to give Peter Bendix a ton of credit for what he has turned this Marlins team into. This is not the same team that was run by the previous regime. There may be a couple of players in the organization who managed to stay on board through the transition, but they are nothing alike.

I have been longing to see what a winner in Miami would look like for a long time, and the overhaul that this front office has undergone in both administration and on the field leaves me hopeful that there should be one surfacing through the waves soon.