Miami Marlins prospect return notes after trades

It arguably all started with this trade. The trade when the Miami Marlins sent Luis Arraez to the San Diego Padres. It continued with the trade that annoyed more fans, as Jake Burger was a fan favorite. It followed with the trade of Jesus Luzardo to the Philadelphia Phillies. Those trades had one big thing in common: the fanbase wasn't happy and was shocked by the low returns.

The Miami Marlins didn't get the returns that the fans wanted.

The average fan of the game in 2025 has access to information that fans didn't in past decades. There's easy access to a multitude of statistics and advanced data that one can analyze to their heart's desire. Unfortunately, one thing that we as fans have always had in common is we overrate our players and believe that we know better than the executives in charge.

Let's get a couple of things out of the way, executives do make mistakes. Some of these mistakes we can see as fans from a mile away. Sadly, the Miami Marlins are known for some horrible trades. That said, it's also a fact that the way front offices evaluate players is different than the way fans do. Front offices care far more about things that we don't even really think about.

The perfect example of the aforementioned discrepancy is the Luis Arraez trade. Many fans were outraged how a batting champ could be traded for "so little" or at all. Yet, reports at the time indicated that front offices didn't value him much and that Peter Bendix received the best possible return for him. The reality is that he really had nothing to offer except his elite contact. Teams were far more concerned with his bad defense, low walk rate, no speed and lack of power than his elite ability to hit singles.

Jake Burger may have been liked for his power, but his propensity for strikeouts, lack of walks, bad defense and low contact were far more reflective of the return than the power. Jesus Luzardo's innjury history and lousy 2024 season has certainly played a bigger factor than his production from 2022-2023 for other teams when weighing the possibility of a trade.

Should Peter Bendix and the Miami Marlins have traded them at all? The 2024 season was lost at the time of the Luis Arraez trade and he was under contract only through the already lost 2025 season. It made sense to move him. Jake Burger is simply not the player that Bendix likes to build around and Jesus Luzardo is a gamble health-wise. I would've waited to trade Luzardo until mid-season to maximize the return, but I don't have the medicals and the rumor is those medicals scared off the Chicago Cubs. We'll see how that trade works out, but the others made sense completely.