The Miami Marlins have started the 2024 season 0-8 following a loss on Thursday to the St. Louis Cardinals, a game they at one point led 5-3 but in the bottom of the seventh the Cardinals scored five runs and ended up winning 8-5. Today they will take on the Cardinals for the second game of the series with ITD’s third-ranked Marlins prospect Max Meyer on the mound making his second start of the 2024 campaign. In his first outing, he went five innings giving up two runs on two hits; he walked two and struck out four.
Injuries
A lot is going wrong for the Marlins in this 2024 season, entering the year they knew they’d be without Sandy Alcantara for the whole season due to him having Tommy John and his recovery process. The Marlins were expecting a starting rotation of Jesus Luzardo, Edward Cabrera, Eury Perez, Braxton Garrett, and one of the four who are currently on the staff right now. In spring on top of being without Alcantara, Braxton Garrett, Edward Cabrera, and Eury Perez all were dealing with injuries in spring training. Garrett with dealing with shoulder impingement he will make a rehab start for Triple-A Jacksonville on Sunday. Cabrera is dealing with the same injury as Garrett and made his second rehab start last night for Triple-A Jacksonville going four innings giving up one run on four hits; he walked three and struck out one. Perez was announced the other day that he’d be undergoing Tommy John surgery which ends his 2024 season and likely he won’t return until the middle of 2025. Right now the Marlins rotation has A.J. Puk who has been a career reliever as the number two starter which should tell you the turmoil this team is in.
Lineup
The only hitter producing right now is Jake Burger who is hitting .355 with two home runs and ten RBI. Arraez and Chisholm the two big names on this team aren’t hitting with Arraez hitting .188 while Chisholm is hitting .185; Chisholm does have a home run and five RBI. As a team, they are 25th in batting average hitting .204, 26th in OPS with a .589. Last season they hit .259 good enough for fourth and had an OPS of .721 good enough for 19th. So even though the injuries on the pitching staff the lineup isn’t hitting. Arraez who has played in all eight games this season won the batting title last season and hit .444 in his first eight games of last season has just struggled out of the gate.
Kim Ng
Ng began her career as an intern with the Chicago White Sox after she graduated from the University of Chicago. Her original duties were to research Rule 5 draftees. She had a love for statistics and she would be hired full time in 1991. She would go on to work for the New York Yankees in 1998 as an assistant general manager then in 2021 she joined the Los Angeles Dodgers in the same role but also added the title of vice president. In 2011 she left the Dodgers organization to be senior vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball which she would report to Joe Torre. In November 2020, she was hired as the general manager of the Miami Marlins becoming the first woman to become a general manager of a men’s team in the history of major North American sports as well as the first female Asian-American general manager in MLB history. After the Marlins first playoff appearance since 2020 which was before Ng’s first season, the Marlins tried to demote her but she turned down the role she was offered leading her to leave the organization.
The Curse
Right now the Marlins are off to their worst start in franchise history and the worst start by a team that made the playoffs the previous season. The Marlins finished 84-78 in 2023 and were third in the National League East. If everything goes right, the team in 2025 might be solid, but 2024 might be a punt season and could be a season cursed by the idea of ownership trying to demote Kim Ng from her role leading her to leave the organization.
