Full Transcript for Which Marlins You'll Be Seeing in Arizona Fall League and Winter Ball

sixth prospect overall in the Marlins organization, and I think FOF is a little higher on him than consensus given the immense tools that Lewis has. He was acquired in the Ryan Weathers trade from the Yankees organization. This was his first year in the Marlins org. He spent all of it at the AA level in Pensacola. Actually, what I wanted to do here is give you guys a statistical overview of all these AFL players. There they are right here. We'll be going through them one by one, but this is a look at how they performed during the regular season and the levels that they played at. Lewis was limited to 89 games with AA Pensacola this year, hit 18 home runs, stole 20 bases There was a moment where he was briefly leading all of the Southern league in homers. And then that injury popped up during the course of the middle of the year, costing him about a month and a half. Uh, the scary number there is the strikeout total on a hundred and 11 strikeouts in 368 plate appearances. Whenever you're over 30%, that is a red flag at the minor league level. Uh, in this case, you give them a bit of grace because this was a new level of competition for Lewis. And he was relatively age appropriate for that level at 23 years old, but still, um, In a league that was generally hitter-friendly this year, the Southern League, he was more or less a league average hitter while spending the majority of his reps in center field, some of those in right field. He is the one Marlins player that is in the Glendale lineup for their season opener here on Saturday, October 3rd. Let me make sure that I have this right. He is hitting cleanup in that lineup today, and he is playing left field if I have that right. So an interesting twist there because one of his strongest assets is as an overall player, is his arm, and yet coming off a season where he played exclusively center field, right field, and DH, he's going to be in left field, at least for that very first game. Because these rosters are as deep as they are, there's not going to be anybody here that's playing in every single game, a 30-game schedule for Glendale, and I think best-case scenario would be for Lewis and the other position players to get about 24 games, to get maybe 80%, four out of every five, They're in there. Otherwise, it just has to be this rotation by necessity, given the depth of these rosters and the fact that all these guys are chosen to participate in order to get reps for themselves, even those that aren't particularly highly regarded in their organizations. This is a relatively, there is a playoff bracket at the very end of the fall, but more so than anything else, this is about getting everybody involved, participation trophies for all these players. So that's one wrinkle to it that benefits some of these Marlins players that aren't held in high regard themselves and have very questionable tools. But at the same time, it means that the headliners that you want to see most often, you got to check the lineups before every game because there is a chance that they'll be sitting out just to give room for somebody from another organization. That is Dylan Lewis. Number two that we get to, and a very strong number two for a variety of reasons, that's Max Williams. who jumped through three levels of the organization this year, and that's despite spending so much of this season on the injured list coming off a shoulder surgery. Lewis was a 2025 Marlins draft pick, a draft class that is very quickly proving to be exceptional for this Marlins team. Not that we've seen any of these guys at the major league level yet, but we are going to be seeing multiple of them as soon as next season, and Williams even potentially has an opportunity to get up there. He started this year Coming off his shoulder injury, made his debut with low-A Jupiter and then shot through the organization, was raking at all three levels that he played at, Jupiter, high-A Beloit, and then ended up in Pensacola. An OPS over 1,000. You heard that right. Over 1,000 OPS this year in the games that he played, which would have made him on a per-game basis the best hitter in this entire organization at a full-season level. Showed a lot of power to all fields. The thing that we didn't see from him is that much defense at all. He was exclusively a DH for the first month plus coming off the IL and only made a couple appearances in the corner spots before the regular season ended. I think as much as looking to see how legit the bat is, it would be nice to see him defensively coming off of. Now that he's further removed from the injury, I imagine that he's going to be getting semi-regular reps in the outfield for Glendale. Based on my view of him back in college at Florida State, I thought he was a really adequate defensive player. He played heavily in center field in college. Realistically, in the pros, he's going to be settling into the corner outfield spots. But I saw some really good range from Williams out there and don't see any reason why he can't be an adequate left fielder at the very least moving forward. I don't want people to get confused by that, seeing that he was DH'd so much this year. That wasn't because he was a defensive liability per se. It was because they were protecting his arm coming off this surgery. and I would like to see the training wheels off from that regard here in the Fall League. That's the biggest value to have him participating. Williams is number 22 on the FOF Top 30, given that we based that off a small sample. He's a guy that could move up or down fairly dramatically between now and the start of the 2027 season, based on what we see from him in the Fall League. Another former early round draft pick going back the previous year, Carter Johnson, so the third and final Marlins position player in the AFL. He needed the kind of year that he had. Johnson was very quickly trending towards being a bust entering 2026, a guy that simply was not hitting whatsoever in

low-A Jupiter in 2024 or 25. Way too many strikeouts and not nearly enough power to justify his profile. As a guy that they drafted as a shortstop, they've given him his fair shake at that position, but it's not going to happen. Johnson realistically moving forward. I would think he's going to be limited to second base. You could make a case for second base or third base, but I think either way, he's not going to be much of an asset at those spots. It's more about he has just enough. He checks enough boxes there in terms of handling the routine plays that you could get away with it. He just needs to hit at a very high level. And for a lot of 2026, he did. He earned a promotion out of Jupiter in the middle of the season at the very end of June, given the uptick in the power production there. and the fact that he was making more contact than he did before, just the overall quality of the contact, even when it wasn't leaving the yard, was pretty encouraging. Then it got off to a hot start in Beloit as well, and you could draw a line pretty directly before and after the All-Star break with him. He had an OPS just over 800 during that first half of the season, and then coming out of the All-Star break, barely over 600 the rest of the way. Now, that was a new level for him. It's not so uncommon to have that kind of adjustment anymore, issue, uh, at that level. And the strikeouts were not necessarily the biggest problem. The second half of the year was hovering around 25%, a little bit lower than that, but all of a sudden the power went away. So that's kind of the, uh, something that is going to be followed very closely with Carter Johnson in the fall league and moving forward is how much power really is there. He's got to get at least up to average power, I would think, to have any sort of major league role. And that's still on the table for him. He just physically needs to continue to get stronger. He's gone through a couple interesting adjustments to his batting stance and mechanics through the years, and I think there still might be another adjustment away from unlocking to really getting his full body into his swing and making sure he's... The exit velocities haven't necessarily jumped off the page yet, and that's going to continue to be the question with him, is how much in-game power can he unlock for a guy that, coming into the pros, there was a lot of upside there. So that upside... As a guy that is still just 20 years old, but the lack of performance he had during his first year and a half in minor league baseball was highly troubling. And now that's sinking in that he's not much of a fielder, not much of a base runner. It just puts so much more pressure on him to absolutely rake at the plate. So we'll take our big break here, come back on the other side, go through each of the pitchers for the Marlins in the AFL, and then a little look ahead to winter ball as well. Stick with us here on Fish Unfiltered. Jet Ski Rentals of South Florida. They

present all of our podcast efforts here on Fish on First. Miami's best jet ski and boat adventures. Jet Ski Rentals of South Florida. With six jet ski locations and over 120 boats, there's something for every style and every budget. Ride jet skis right in front of the downtown skyline in Ferris Wheel or book your own private boat starting as low as $ 300 with the captain included. Bring your drinks to your friends and enjoy the water your way. The boat is completely yours for the time you reserve it. The reservation based only to book call 305-990-2192 or check them out online at sfjetskirentals.com. Make sure to use our promo code FISHONFIRST and that gets you a 10% discount off your next booking. Again, that's 305-990-2192 or online at sfjetskirentals.com. Back on Fish Unfiltered, here's again an overview statistically of how these players perform during the regular season. We got through the three position players in Dylan Lewis, Max Williams, and Carter Johnson. Going over on the pitching side, I'll start off with Brian Mendoza. Like so many other of these players that the Marlins have acquired recently and brought through their organization, he was initially part of another organization and came to Miami via trade. The Jake Berger trade two years ago, one of three players acquired in that deal. And there's not much positive to highlight with Mendoza. I was actually relatively excited about him at the time of the deal. I thought he might turn out to be the best player in that package, and he still might, but that's not saying a whole lot, given that he just hasn't been getting out at the high A level. He spent the past two years in Beloit, both times with an ERA around a five, and this past season losing his starting rotation job altogether. He's pitched more out of the pen than he did in the rotation this So he's one of these guys that actually, like Carter Johnson before him, didn't really miss time due to injury per se, but didn't get quite as many innings as they would have envisioned coming out of the shoot just because he wasn't in a rotation for much of the year in Beloit. 30 appearances overall, 18 of those out of the pen, ended up at 94 and two-thirds innings, which was more than the previous year, but a little bit less than 2024. It's just, yeah, a guy that decent job at preventing hits, but the walk rate has really spiked up quite a bit compared to where he was two years ago. Control was supposed to be one of his biggest assets coming to Miami, and that has not translated. Allowed 13 home runs, which was by far a career high. Still 22 years old, so it does have time on his side, but now we have a bigger sample of him struggling in a multi-inning role than we have him being successful. Still wait to see whether he's going to get any starts in the AFL. I would be somewhat surprised if he does. I would think he has more of that multi-inning relief appearance. I think the bottom line is that he needs to be getting ahead in counts more

often if he's going to be successful. As a guy that has very average velocity, if not a tick below average, he just needs to be getting a lot of strike ones and being able to work off of that. So we'll see if he does it, but certainly... some urgency with Mendoza to turn his career around here in the Fall League. Emmitt Olsen, who pitched very little during the regular season, coming off of Tommy John surgery in mid-2025. By the end of the year, he was able to get a cup of coffee at the AA level. That didn't go well. And just in general, the results during the regular season were pretty awful. An ERA right around 10. Somebody that was struggling to regain his control as well. similar to Mendoza, that is going to be crucial for Olsen moving forward as being ahead in counts. And the Marlins still holding out some hope for him as a starter. He pitched quite effectively in that role in full season ball in 24 and 25. So they think he could get back to that level, but he is now several years older in his mid-20s at this point. So the clock ticking a bit on Olsen due to the time that he missed. So in this case, I don't think the results are going to be micro-analyzed too much for him more so than anybody else here. It's about making up for the endings that he wasn't able to get for during the regular season. Someone that I think is more likely than not to be getting some starts in the fall league to stretch out and to put himself in a position to handle something close to a full season workload in 2027. He was a guy, he may have been on our top 30 list at some point in the past, or at least a strong consideration. At this point, he just has to rebuild his value quite a bit after the time that he missed, and given the underwhelming initial look at the upper minors that Olsen had this year. But we should be seeing quite a bit of him just because of the lack of endings that he had during the regular season. This is Tristan Stevens, the only picture I could find of these guys from photo day where he's not smiling, and I imagine the thought in Stevens' head might be, I'm getting too old for this shit. He is... He might be the very oldest player in the Fall League this year, 28 years old, turning 29 before the end of this calendar year. Stevens is a former undrafted free agent who has spent his whole career in the Marlins organization, and he's been relatively effective when he's been available, including this year. This year he was awesome when he actually was able to pitch, which wasn't very often. So he spent the vast majority of each of the past two years on the injured list in 25, He only made four regular season appearances, and this year was only at 10, 15 and two-thirds innings, most of that with AA Pensacola. And yeah, the effectiveness has been there overall for Stevens. It's just that it's an interesting choice to send him to the Fall League. This is a player that I think would have been a more likely candidate to latch on with a winter ball team,

facing more of competition closer to his own age rather than this. It's just going to be very hard for him to prove too much when he's The average age of the Fall League participants is going to be closer to 23 years old, maybe even 22 and a half for the hitters. So even if he has great results here, you're going to have to take them with a grain of salt. I think the positive, at least for fans, is that we're able to get some of his outings of public stat cast data, which wasn't available at the AA level this year. So we'll get a clear idea of who he is as a pitcher at this stage of his career, statistically, and the actual shapes of his pitches. stuff like that that could actually make a determination in terms of whether he is a potential non-roster invite to Major League camp. I glossed over that with Lewis. I expect Lewis to be part of Marlins Major League camp in the spring, provided that we have a semi-normal spring training. And Stevens, because of his age, this is kind of a make-or-break offseason for him in terms of just showing that he is somebody worth a look against Major League competition in the not-too-distant future. given all the reps that he's had and the success he's had in a small sample in the minors to this point. So he's going to be trying to make his case to have a relatively short-term track towards getting up to the highest level. And he'll be pitching out. He's exclusively a reliever, if I didn't make that clear. So we'll be seeing him just out of the pen during these games. But he could be pitching some relatively high-leverage innings for Glendale this fall over these next few weeks. Continuing with a couple more pitchers here. This is Alex Williams, AA Pensacola. I remember getting relatively excited about him at the start of his professional career, another Marlins draft pick back in 2022. I felt he had a chance to stick as a starter early on, but since then, you know, the lack of strike throwing has mainly held him back in addition to the injury bug. So we spent more of this past year in relief for Pensacola, elevated ERA, elevated walk rate compared to where he was earlier in his pro career. But the changeup that he has is incredible. Or I should say, in this case, a splitter that he has is incredible. One that has a ton of separation between his fastball and is able to get a ton of swings and misses outside the zone. So he's a guy that the potential major league future would be as that two pitch reliever, four seamers up in the zone and splitters that dive down coming off of that. We've seen that playbook work for plenty of guys before. In his case, the lack of fastball velo, the fact that he's more often sitting in the low 90s, it puts a whole lot more pressure on him to be getting people to bite on that. splitter of his. And so that'll be something interesting to watch here. Getting some of the measurables on that splitter would be useful. And just to see how often he is in the zone with his fastball. That's always a tough, tight rope to walk as a pitcher. when you feel that your fastball is hittable, but also you know you need to establish it in the zone in order to get to that splitter, and we'll see if Williams can handle it. But, you know, at this point, the expectations on him aren't particularly high, so anything you get from him is gravy moving forward. The last player we'll get to is the one that I don't think was in attendance for the official picture day, so I went to his Instagram account and Thankfully, got some confirmation right there that Samuel Carpio is indeed participating in the Fall League as scheduled. There he is in a warm-up shirt for the Desert Dogs down there in Glendale. He is the least experienced of these pitchers participating, having spent this past year at Loe Jupiter. And the book on him is pretty similar to Williams in that his main offering that is going to make or break his professional career is his off-speed pitch. In his case, it's a change-up. that has some similarities to Williams. In fact, one thing that I noticed that I'm mildly encouraged about is how often he's able to throw it in the zone and is relatively fearless in terms of throwing his changeup in the zone. So that's another route for him, not only relying on chases out of the zone, but also feeling that he could go there early in counts and catch hitters by surprise and get takes. The thing is, having spent most of this year available for Jupiter. I could take a closer look. I don't think he had any extended stints on the IL, which makes him somewhat of a bizarre candidate for the fall league as a guy that pitched 41 times in relief, a 510 ERA. Yeah, the strikeout rate was pretty impressive, nearing 30%, but he walked a batter per inning, and doing that at low A is certainly concerning. The route to get from there to any sort of usefulness in the majors is a, that's a long path for him, no matter how well his performance goes in the fall league. He's been exclusively a reliever during his pro career. Another guy that, um, has spent his entire professional career in the Marlins organization. So a wild card, I would consider him as a, because he's not even particularly young for the level. He was 23 this past year. Yeah. Turned 23 in may. And you know, to be there, and still not dominate at low A in a relief-only role. Yeah, there's a lot that has to go right for Carpio in order for him to really turn the corner and become a prospect of note in this organization. Decent fastball velocity, I'd say perhaps the best out of all the pitchers that the Marlins are sending. Yeah, the thing is that he's not a super effective heater. He is pretty reliant on that changeup, but I'm interested to get a closer look at him against slightly harder competition than what he faced during the regular season. I think he balanced it all. And the AFL is sort of like facing double-A competition, relatively. Yeah, in this particular year, there are quite a few star-studded guys

participating. So I'd say, especially for the pitchers, they have their work cut out for them this year. Yeah, historically, there have been some ugly stat lines we've seen from Marlins prospects in the Fall League. And yeah, in this case, I'd be relatively surprised if any of them actually... measurably improve upon the regular season stats, but that's why they play the games. It's about six games a week for these guys over the next, well, I'd say it averages out to more about five, five and a half games a week for Glendale over these next six weeks. So we'll be following them closely on FOF, not only diving into the stats, but of course, looking into the underlying performances that anything, any traits that we see from them that actually could have some significance moving forward. So with that said, we'll do a quick look ahead at winter ball as well, because we're just less than two weeks away from the Dominican Winter League getting underway. And several of the other major leagues are going to follow after that. The guy I'm putting on the screen right now, that is Davison De Los Santos, who was one of the stars of Marlins winter ball in 25-26 with the Gigantes. And as their semi-regular first baseman, he was one of the better hitters in the league. Yeah, just as a refresher, From the previous winter, outside of De Los Santos, the top two overall performers were actually Jared Serna in the Mexican League. He set a Mexican League all-time record for triples in a single year, and he didn't even play the entire season. But he showed his versatility. He was an extra base hit machine, even outside of triples, for Charos de Jalisco. And yeah, he was just an extraordinary performer out there. Unfortunately, it didn't translate much to the subsequent 2026 season. He spent more of that as a mediocre role player with AAA Jacksonville. He got his cup of coffee in Miami in September and had a few nice moments as a second baseman when Xavier Edwards went down with his injury. But overall, Serna has still seen his prospect stock drop quite a bit from the trade. And whatever power he was producing... Over the winter, it just didn't really translate whatsoever. Once he got back to affiliated ball, he slugged in the mid 300s for Jacksonville, which was a little bit below average for the league that they play in. And the slugging didn't really translate during that brief look that he had in Miami. The other fascinating case was Eric Radicek, who I thought I was mildly encouraged about during 2025. He went to Australia. Their league gets underway right around Thanksgiving. It starts later than most of the other ones. And he won MVP of the Australian Baseball League. It was an incredible run from him. The run production numbers were amazing. He was getting familiar with first base after previously playing mainly the outfield for the Marlins org. And we didn't see him again in affiliated ball after that. He was assigned to AA Pensacola, spent the first couple months of the season on the developmental list, and then got released. So that was one of the stranger career opportunities journeys that I've seen in quite a while to be at the highest of highs, granted in a relatively low-level winter league in Australia, but to perform so exceptionally well over there, to return to a level that he played the previous year and just not even get a shot to step on the field. He ended up finishing this summer playing independent ball and frankly not doing particularly well over there. His professional career at somewhat of a crossroads right now coming off of that. So that was an unusual case for somebody to build so much momentum during the offseason and not get a chance to translate it at all when returning to his previous organization. Some of the other Marlins players that participated last year, speaking of those that didn't really carry the momentum moving forward, Maximo Acosta. He was an incredible performer in Venezuela. He had an 885 OPS as playing a split between shortstop and third base. Really productive offensively during his 30 games or so over there, and yet he had what could only be described as a nightmarish subsequent season for the Marlins. Didn't even get to play at all at the major league level this past year just because he was struggling so much at AAA, hitting in the mid-100s for so much of the year, and spending a couple different stints on the injured list, most notably with a thumb injury, a thumb ligament sprain that I believe required some surgery in the middle of the year, Whether it was before or after that surgery, he just did not get back on track offensively whatsoever. And given the time missed, given the fact that he didn't get to build upon his debut in 2025, you may see him return to Winter Bowl again in his native Venezuela this offseason. So yeah, aside from that, I've seen that Chris Arroyo, he's from that 2025 draft class, the one that includes Max Williams and so many of those other guys drafted in the early rounds who have panned out so far in the pros. Iva Arquette, Cam Canarella, Brandon Compton. Crystal Royal was the fifth round pick from that year. His year was cut short almost immediately in Jupiter due to a meniscus injury. And if all things go well, he should be spending most of this winter ball season playing in Puerto Rico. So that's his native country as well. It's an interesting mix in winter ball between guys playing from their original country and those who are imported from outside. We do see quite a few American players get some sort of experience in winter ball over the course of the year. And the reason why I wanted to highlight it now is because I think we could see an even higher concentration of notable major leaguers participating in winter ball because of the looming lockout from December 1st onwards. There will be no communication between rostered major league players and their teams. and the uncertainty about exactly when spring training is going

to get underway. Sometimes the schedule is a simple obstacle in terms of why these guys don't play more often over the winter, given that the playoffs and the Caribbean series bleed almost directly into spring training. But there's only a matter of days in between those events happening. So if you're a player that is being relied upon heavily by your major league team, you're not going to really get their blessing to participate deep into the winter ball season. But in this case, If we feel that spring training, at the very least, is going to be delayed, if not outright pushed into the summer or something like that, in a worst-case scenario with these CBA negotiations, you could be seeing these players getting more involved in... winter ball than they would be in years past. So I don't want to speculate too much with individual guys because that's a choice they may make deeper into the year. That's generally how it goes, particularly on the Dominican side, where early in the year, you don't see too many guys that are reputable big leaguers. But as the year goes on and the buildup to their round robin playoff gets closer that's when more of them do come over and once the playoffs get underway you can see some lineups that are vastly comprised of guys with immediate or current you know big league experience so I think they'll be extra entertaining this time around given the way that the lockout bleeds into that it's just something to watch for in terms of players who've played winter ball in the past when they were coming up through the minors and maybe haven't done it in a while and but given the lack of reps they might be getting in early 2027, that this might fill the void for them. They earn a little bit of money along the way, and they actually get to compete for something tangible during the playoff time. So yeah, just to recap, winner leagues in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, those are the main ones, but also in Australia. There's one in Panama that takes place as well, in Colombia too. Those are ones where it's a little more difficult to get current stats and video on, But either way, I'll be watching intently between now and then. So, yeah, for those of you watching it, by the time this goes up, the Arizona Fall League season will already be underway. We'll be keeping track of that obsessively on FishOnFirst.com. I'll be keeping the stats updated, finding highlights anywhere I can. And as a reminder, all those games are being streamed for free. If you go to MLB.com slash AFL, you can find streams of every single game That's an improvement they've made just in recent years, providing broadcasts, not MLB multi-camera productions that we're accustomed to seeing, but those that are certainly better than nothing to fill that void for those of you that aren't particularly interested in the MLB postseason. And this continues even beyond the postseason itself into mid-November. That'll get you more intimate. For those of you that maybe don't subscribe to MILB.TV and don't follow the minor leagues during the season, This will get you up to speed on what to expect from these guys. So I'm really excited to follow that along this year. And as always, I'll bring you whatever insight I can provide from those relatively small samples out in Arizona. We'll be breaking it down here. We'll continue to have content on the pod channel every single week moving forward from myself and the rest of our FOF staff. So we appreciate everybody that supports us along the way. Another episode of Unfiltered coming up very shortly after this one, starring myself and Kevin Burrell, breaking down the Major League team and its near-term future. So check out that wherever you get your podcasts. As always, signing off by saying, go fish.