MIAMI - The Marlins had every chance to move on from Jakob Marsee during a season that started badly and stayed rocky for a long time. They didn’t.
Marsee could have folded, too. He didn’t.
Instead, the 23-year-old center fielder has turned the final stretch of the 2026 season into proof that Miami was right to stay patient. Since Aug. 7, when he pushed his average back above .200 for the first time since June 22, Marsee has hit .309/.418/.497 over a 44-game run. He has also drawn nearly as many walks as strikeouts, with 22 walks and 29 strikeouts, while adding five doubles, four triples and five home runs.
That surge has changed the look of his season line, even if it still falls short of what he and the club wanted in spring. Through Saturday’s 8-3 loss to the Braves at loanDepot park, Marsee was hitting .231/.348/.359 with a .707 OPS, along with 19 doubles, seven triples and 11 homers in 155 games.
“I feel really good right now,” Marsee recently said. “Just feel in a good place, using the whole field, and have a lot of confidence right now.”
That confidence was there long before the numbers caught up. Miami never seriously considered sending Marsee to Triple-A Jacksonville to rebuild his swing, manager Clayton McCullough said.
After the All-Star break, there were conversations about reducing his playing time because other players were producing, but that never happened. Marsee kept grinding, kept taking quality at-bats and kept playing strong defense until the bat finally came around.
“Jakob's tough,” McCullough said recently. “This is a difficult place to struggle. [Between] the expectations that he and we had for him coming into the year and how much we were going to count on him, and to not get off to the greatest start, to really struggle for the first half of the season, but to still hang in there -- continue to try to find ways to get out of that, make adjustments, continue to play good defense, take high-quality at-bats -- and then for things to turn and for him to perform like this speaks to a lot of his grit and toughness.”
The underlying numbers backed up the belief that better days were coming. Entering play Saturday, Baseball Savant had Marsee in the 91st percentile in chase rate at 22.3%, the 89th percentile in walk rate at 12.7% and the 83rd percentile in whiff rate at 18.1%.
“For a guy that has that good of discipline and can actually take pitches at 100 [mph] that are almost strikes and they're not, and have the confidence to go up there,” hitting coach Pedro Guerrero said, “that discipline is definitely commendable and gives you success in stretches when you are not being good, like the first half.”
Even when the hits weren’t falling, Marsee still found ways to help. He entered Saturday in the 94th percentile with nine outs above average, and while he was 23-for-35 on stolen-base attempts, his baserunning run value of one was still above average.
McCullough said that defense gave the club a reason to keep running Marsee out there.
“What made me so confident to continue to run Jacob out there again was he was going to go play great defense,” McCullough said. “We're going to have someone in center field who can go track it down. … When you can't defend and you're a one-trick pony, and you don't hit, you're not real good for a team.”
At the plate, Marsee’s recent improvement has come with a more complete approach, including damage to the pull side. His mammoth homer to right on Sept. 16 in Arizona was part of that.
Guerrero said Marsee’s swing decisions stayed strong even during the slump, but the swings he was getting off didn’t always match the plan. Against pitches up and in, he would get too upright and try to hit the other way.
For Marsee and the Marlins, the hope now is that this version of him carries into 2027.
“It sucks not helping the team,” Marsee said. “It sucks playing bad.
I don't think my confidence ever changed. I think even when I went up to at-bats, I had a lot of confidence and trust in my abilities at the plate.
It just sometimes gets confusing while you're missing pitches or rolling some over. But I know I'm a good player, and I really trust that.
And I also know everything happens for a reason. I just trust God through everything, and I just want to win games no matter what.”
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