Marlins Newsletter: Sandy Struggles, X to 2B, .500 road trip
Following a 3-3 road trip to Southern California, the Marlins will head home to host the Giants this weekend and the Rockies next week.
When Gavin Sheets hit a 2-run home run to give the Padres the lead in the 7th, it looked like the Marlins had reached a new low here in 2025. However, a big 3-run 8th inning — thanks to Agustín Ramírez’s 2-run go-ahead single and Eric Wagaman’s RBI double for insurance — ultimately set up Calvin Faucher to lock down a save in 1-2-3 fashion and salvage the series.
That said, Miami leaves that series with a lot to be concerned about regarding their pitching staff and a lot to be satisfied with on the hitting side.
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first by talking about Sandy Alcantara and Max Meyer’s recent struggles…
Former Cy Young Award-winner Sandy Alcantara had yet another disappointing outing on Wednesday at Petco Park, completing just 4 innings of work and failing to strike out a single hitter for the first time since 2019.
The common theme throughout Sandy’s 2025 outings has been his Fastball and Sinker being extremely ineffective. In his most recent outing, all 6 of the Padres’ RBIs against Sandy came off either his Sinker or Fastball. Overall, opponents are batting .345 against the Fastball and .267 against the Sinker this season, respectively. To add insult to injury, Sandy’s Fastball and Sinker are his two most-used pitches, with him throwing either one of them 50% of the time.
As for Max Meyer, he registered another disappointing outing after it was looking like things were starting to trend in the right direction.
Coming off a strong outing in which he went 6 innings against the Cubs — allowing a run on 4 hits and striking out 4 — Meyer lasted just 3.1 innings against San Diego, surrendering 4 runs on 7 hits and also failing to record a strikeout.
While Meyer’s 2025 season has been rough overall, he’s shown many flashes of having a really high ceiling, hence his team-leading five quality starts.
Moving on to the position player side of things, I’ll begin with the Marlins announcing that Xavier Edwards will be moved off shortstop and back to his natural position of second base.
In 110 games at shortstop, Edwards posted a -12 DRS and -16 OAA, which both rank in the bottom third of shortstops who’ve played at least 900 innings at the position since the start of last season (Trea Turner and Willy Adames are behind him in DRS, while CJ Abrams is behind in OAA).
To make matters even worse, Edwards’ arm strength is the worst among shortstops since last year.
Edwards started a rehab assignment with the AAA Jumbo Shrimp today and should be back sometime within the next week.
Image courtesy of Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images
To end things more positively, I’ll note that the Marlins now have a team WRC+ of 95, which is enormous progress from their 86 WRC+ last year. Although it’s still five points below league average, it’s a very encouraging sign from an offense composed of guys playing consistently every day for the first time in their big league career.