Miami Marlins History: Best Single-Season Hitters

Digging around for something to find without live sports to fall back on sometimes seems to be like swimming in quicksand.

With blessed little in the way of actual team-developments, the Miami Marlins — and the rest of the sports world for that matter — remain in stasis for the immediate future. Any small development takes on grand proportions in relation to how we would react to a much larger development on a “normal” day.

What is there for us to prognosticate about that we haven’t already beat into the ground? Derek Jeter is forgoing his salary until the actual season starts? It was thought until recently that all players in the minor league system would have to do the same, until a recent press release that let us know that they would actually be getting some income. Not like Jeter’s of course, but it’s something.

Oh, did Yasiel Puig come out and say that the Miami Marlins made him an offer? That’s nice, but I’ll take Corey Dickerson over prima donna Puig any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Newsworthy? Again, we’ll take whatever we can get these days. So what’s going on? Are we bloggers at these fan-sites expected to “create” news?

I can’t do anything news-worthy that wouldn’t land me in prison, so I’ll have to dig deep into the old grey matter and try to come up with something that some of you may sort of like….

With that in mind, I decided to look at the best single-season Florida and Miami Marlins through their 27-season major league history. This isn’t a list about the best single-seasons in Marlins history, it’s a list about guys who landed with the team for a single-year and did their best with it. Before I get into the top 10 hitters to spend just one year with the Fish, here’s a look at who just missed the cut, out of 42 single-season Marlins with over 100 plate appearances, ranked by OPS+.

11. Garrett Jones 2014: 100 OPS+
12. Neil Walker 2019: 98 OPS+
13. Luis Gonzalez 2008: 95 OPS+
14. Jorge Alfaro 2019: 95 OPS+
15. Jose Lopez 2011: 95 OPS+
16. Harold Ramirez 2019: 93 OPS+
17. Todd Hollandsworth 2003: 93 OPS+
18. Ross Gload 2009: 90 OPS+
19. Henry Cotto 1993: 90 OPS+
20. Todd Linden 2007: 87 OPS+

As a footnote to this list, Jones, ranked above as having the 11th best single-season Marlins season in history, had an OPS+ of 100, dead-pegged at the National League average. The 10 players on the following pages were the only 10 to gain an “above average” season, as OPS+ defines it.