The Miami Marlins have had their share of draft wins, but the misses have left a mark too. When a club spends a premium pick and the player never becomes what was expected, that disappointment lingers. For Miami, a few names stand out for all the wrong reasons.
Andrew Kolek sits near the top of that list. The Marlins took the right-handed pitcher second overall in the 2014 MLB Draft and gave him a $6 million signing bonus, but the big-league payoff never came. Kolek never started a game in the majors, and his minor league career with Miami produced a 5-16 record and a 5.66 ERA across 66 games, 39 of them starts, over five seasons.
Jeremy Hermida was another high pick who never quite matched the billing. Miami grabbed him 11th overall in the 2002 MLB Draft when he was 21 years old, and he spent the first five of his eight professional seasons with the organization.
His best year came in 2007, when he hit .296 with 18 home runs, 63 RBIs and 127 hits, though he also struck out 105 times. The next season, his strikeout total climbed to a career-high 138.
Hermida did put together three straight seasons with more than 100 hits, but the swing-and-miss issues never went away. After leaving Miami, he played for the San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics and Cincinnati Reds, and his career was over by age 28.
Kyle Skipworth rounds out the group, and his story fits the familiar “what could have been” mold. A catcher from California, he won Gatorade High School Baseball Player of the Year honors in 2008, a credential that pushed him up the prospect ladder.
The Marlins made him the sixth overall pick in the 2008 MLB Draft. Skipworth was a left-handed hitter who threw right-handed, stood 6-foot-4, and came with power, size and strong defensive skills.
That glove helped drive his draft stock, but he never delivered the kind of offense Miami needed from him.
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Yankees Bullpen Buzz Suddenly Centers On One High-Leverage Wild Card
The Yankees are expected to shop for bullpen help at the trade deadline, and one name from the Marlins has already surfaced as a possible fit because of the kind of arm he still represents. Miami has a reliever with the raw stuff that can intrigue contenders even when the season line looks uneven, which is exactly the sort of profile that tends to pop in late-July speculation.
For the Marlins, the question is less about whether the market will be there and more about what direction the season takes from here. If the club stays in the postseason picture, keeping that high-leverage arm makes plenty of sense, but if the standings push Miami toward a different path, the calculus changes quickly and a deadline move becomes a real possibility. [Read more 🡒]
Marlins Just Made Their Wild Card Push Feel Very Real
The Marlins keep finding ways to make their summer feel a little more serious, and Saturdays 6-5 win over Seattle at loanDepot park was another reminder that this is no longer just a nice run. Miami had to go 10 innings to finish it off, but the result pushed the club to 50-42 and kept the momentum building around a team that has spent the past few weeks making the Wild Card picture look less like a dream and more like a possibility.
Seattle came in looking every bit like a contender, but Miami handled the pressure, answered when it had to and finally broke through in extras. The Mariners had been rolling and had just snapped out of a long scoring drought, so this was the kind of game that can carry a little extra weight in July, especially for a Marlins team trying to prove it belongs in the conversation for the rest of the season. [Read more 🡒]