Miami Marlins can’t afford to botch this trade

This off-season has been embarrassing for the Miami Marlins, but the plan is to still trade pitching for hitting. This also means staying “patient” as Kim Ng insists. While that’s a pretty tone-deaf request from our GM, I’m hoping that she will surprise us with a good trade or two. That however does not mean this trade. Let me preface it by saying that JaysJournal is a great site, it also sees things from the Toronto Blue Jays point of view, which doesn’t necessarily align with ours.

The Miami Marlins will be very careful when trading Pablo López for hitting.

The trade in question has the Miami Marlins sending Pablo López to Toronto for C Danny Jansen and prospects Sem Robberse and Orelvis Martinez. I should mention that Martinez is their #2 prospect and a #70 prospect in the entire MLB. Rebberse is #6 for Toronto and isn’t on the top 100 list. This trade is great for Toronto, but makes no sense for us.

First of all, we don’t need prospects, we need bats that can help us now. The Miami Marlins are looking to make the playoffs, not go into yet another rebuild. Orelvis is a SS/3B who is expected to get a call-up in 2023. This is good news, but what if he’s a bust? Can we really afford that in our current situation?

The main piece in the trade for the Miami Marlins is Danny Jansen. The problem with Danny is that despite Jacob Stallings struggling in 2022, he was better than Jansen in 2021, and we still have Nick Fortes. We need better hitters, but not at catcher. At least not yet. Jansen is also not particularly good at hitting, having a career .223/.307/.423 batting line. He’s going to be 28 next season, so he’s unlikely to get any better.

There’s about a 0% chance that the Miami Marlins do this trade. There are no hitting improvements for us from this trade, unless Orelvis ends up living up to his potential. This is simply not good enough for us to part with our best available trade chip. We need a better return than that. Try again Toronto.