These two Miami Marlins are key to the team's future

The Miami Marlins really did a number on the Baltimore Orioles in the teams' Trade Deadline trade. Peter Bendix traded at best a mid-rotation starter in Trevor Rogers (7.11 ERA/5.00 FIP in 4 games and 19.0 innings pitched for Baltimore so far). The return were new third baseman Connor Norby and LF Kyle Stowers. I already wrote about the game-changing possibilities of what Norby can offer to The Fish. These two however are much more...

Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers can be cornerstones for the Miami Marlins.

Entering Wednesday, Connor Norby has had an impressive debut with the Miami Marlins. In the admittedly very small sample size of 2 games and 8 AB, he's batting .375/.375/.625. Once again it is a small sample size, but he's showing a lot. Kyle Stowers is batting .133/.200/.133 in 18 games and 60 AB. That's obviously not very good. It turns out that the two support each other in trying to get better.

As soon as Norby got promoted to the Majors and he saw Stowers, he asked him: “‘You're gonna start raking again now that I'm here, right?’" Interestingly, Stowers went 3-4 as soon as he and Norby played their first game together. It's possible that it's because Stowers has been working with hitting coach John Mabry as the article points out. I suspect that it's more likely the latter as well.

Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker has high praise for Norby, who switched from playing second base to third base to accommodate the team. That's why he started off in the Minors after the trade, while Stowers was immediately placed on the Major League team. Skip had this to say:

“His baseball IQ is really high. You can see how he goes about his business on the field. His at-bats, I thought, were good, and his baserunning was good. He's just a good overall all-around baseball player. I'm really excited to watch him the next six weeks and continue to watch him grow here.”

Skip also praised Kyle Stowers as "smart" and said that he's noticing improvements with his work as well. Stowers himself talked about how happy he is on the team and how he's getting more "comfortable" with his AB's. He also said when asked about his improvements:

"Connor being here. No, I’m teasing. … I've been working my butt off with [Mabry] and trying to plug any holes in my swing and continuing to also further my strengths and not trying to … spend so much time covering weaknesses that I'm leaving behind what I do well."

Both Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers have potential to be middle of the order bats based on their Minor League work. The improvements that they make this season will go a long way in having them as cornerstones of the lineup going forward. It was a great trade and now it's just a matter of whether they can be those key bats that the Miami Marlins badly need. Time will answer that question.