Miami Marlins Best To Wear Jersey Number Series No. 6: Dan Uggla

For someone with the No. 6 on their back, this Miami Marlins player might actually be best associated with the number 5.

Best Rule 5 draft pick in Marlins franchise history. One of the best Rule 5 picks of the century across all of MLB. Five straight seasons with 30 plus homers in his career from a position not particularly famous for power. Sure, the last of those came with the Braves. It was a historic stretch though that just spoke to the kind of power he possessed, making it no small wonder that after his five year Marlins career, he was firmly in command of Miami's all-time home run record.

Who was that man? His name is Dan Uggla.

This stop on Marlin Maniac's Best To Wear The Miami Marlins Jersey Number Series was an easy call to make and not just because Uggla remains a personal favorite amongst Marlins players. As I write this, I can just see the hem of a signed jersey of his hanging in my closet. Come to think of it, he probably is my favorite player featured in the series. Anyway, the numbers speak for themselves here.

Uggla's 15.7 Marlins WAR? Good for seventh all-time in South Florida, ahead of Mike Lowell, Jeff Conine, and Gary Sheffield. He played in less than 154 games once in his Marlins career...and that season was the best of his career, earning him his second All-Star appearance with Miami. As for how he played defensively in that All-Star game...hopefully you all had better things to do that night. If there was ever an infielder that needed the DH rule...oh well. The bat always played though and no one ever had cause to doubt Dan's hustle and work ethic.

And then there are the numbers against the best of the rest for the Marlins at No. 6. It's a wide gap.

Really, it's just a two player race. Yes, Andy Fox won a World Series here in 2003, capping off a solid but unspectacular career as a member of the Marlins bench. Jeff Mathis never got the ring but also gave Miami four solid years behind the plate as an excellent defensive catcher. Matt Treanor was also there for a time! But none of those are the other names anyone was thinking of for this jersey.

No, that would be Starling Marte and Otto Lopez.

Marte came over in a 2020 deadline trade to help carry that pleasant distraction of a Marlins team to the playoffs that season. He'd be gone halfway through the very next year, but it was enough to forever win over plenty of hearts and minds among Marlins fans and rack up 3.4 points worth of Marlins WAR.

That's just a tick behind Miami's current starting shortstop, who after two years of proving he belongs in the bigs, seems more likely to overtake Uggla than to slip back behind Marte. Not a free agent until 2030 and capable of playing Gold Glove defense while also challenging for a 20/20 season? That's not a misplaced sentence about Marte either- that's just who Lopez geuninely appears to be just two years removed from Peter Bendix basically getting him for free. His 2024 campaign came in the No. 61 jersey, thus we can only credit him with 3.5 Marlins WAR here at the No. 6 spot. There's a lot to like in Lopez for Marlins fans and he'd make as much sense to extend as any of Miami's current upside talents.

As for Uggla? He's a Miami Marlins all-timer, pure and simple.