The Pensacola Blue Wahoos gave Jacob Kisting a week off to line up their rotation for the Southern League playoffs, and that brought an undefeated regular season to a close. The right-hander’s year wound up looking almost unreal: 10-0 across 23 appearances, 21 of them starts.
Kisting did most of his damage with High-A Bowling Green in the Rays system before the MLB trade deadline sent him to the Miami Marlins in the deal for Liam Hicks. The move pushed him to Double-A Pensacola, where he kept rolling.
Before the trade, he turned in a 1.67 ERA and 2.99 FIP in 18 games. After the deal, he was just as sharp, posting a 1.88 ERA and 2.90 FIP in five outings.
What really made the season pop wasn’t just the clean record. It was how steady he was from start to start.
He kept giving his club a chance every time out, and with enough run support, he never got tagged with a loss. In the context of recent minor league baseball, that kind of unbeaten run over such a large workload is almost unheard of.
The numbers only add to how unusual it was. Setting the floor at 100 innings pitched, no pitcher has ever run through a fully undefeated MiLB season while staying entirely in the Marlins organization. The closest Marlins one-loss seasons belong to Josh Beckett, who went 14-1 in 2001, and José Fernández, who went 14-1 in 2012.
Across all minor league levels, with complete stat records available back to 2006, the only season that really compares is Logan Allen’s in 2021. He also split time between High-A and Double-A and went 9-0 in 21 games, 19 of them starts. Allen has since logged parts of four seasons in the majors, where he owns a 4.55 ERA and 4.71 FIP in 396.0 innings.
There was also Mike Paredes in 2025, who went 11-0 in the upper levels of the Twins system while throwing 105 ⅔ innings. But that came with a different profile entirely, since all but two of his outings were out of the bullpen.
Kisting probably would have gotten more attention if his season hadn’t been interrupted by a trade, and he also doesn’t carry the kind of prospect buzz that forces people to notice. He isn’t on the Fish On First Top 30 prospects list right now, though that could change when the end-of-season update drops.
There are real strengths here. His splitter was nasty enough to bury left-handed hitters, who hit just .146/.213/.217 against him in 216 plate appearances and managed only two homers.
He also cleaned up his own mistakes quickly, never issuing more than three free passes in any outing when walks and hit-by-pitches are combined. And unlike a lot of minor league arms, he was often working deep enough to face the middle of opposing lineups a third time.
Still, the warning signs are there too. Kisting was older than 71% of the batters he saw.
His fastball velocity sits below major league norms, with a sinker that works at 92-94 mph. He also benefited from a very low .251 batting average on balls in play.
Opponents stole bases with ease against him, going 25-for-26, and the one failure likely would have been overturned by video review.
There’s a comparison that fits: current Marlins starter Janson Junk. Junk’s problem has been getting hitters to swing and miss at pitches in the strike zone, and that same issue appears to apply to Kisting. The good news is that Kisting still has time to get stronger and keep refining his pitch shapes.
The trade’s other pieces have moved forward, too. Adrian Santana is now Kisting’s teammate in Pensacola, where the infielder has hit .246/.326/.310 with seven steals and a 79 wRC+ in 30 Double-A games. He still hasn’t homered, even with home runs flying around the Southern League, but his glove looks legitimate.
Brayden Taylor, meanwhile, is getting his first taste of a new level with the Marlins organization. In Triple-A Jacksonville, he has hit .190/.387/.429 with four home runs, eight steals and a 125 wRC+, aided by a massive 23.4% walk rate. He’s mostly playing second base and third base, and barring severe injury or a prolonged MLB lockout, he should get a chance to help the big league club in 2027.
The Rays, for their part, look very happy with what they got back. Hicks has hit .298/.385/.479 with four home runs and a 139 wRC+ in 31 games with his new team.
He ranks eighth among all MLB catchers in that span with 1.0 fWAR, and his production helped Tampa Bay clinch a postseason berth on Friday. Entering Sunday, FanGraphs gave the Rays an 89.2% chance to win the American League East and secure the AL’s No. 1 seed.
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