COVID-19 sidetracked his first season with Marlins. Instructional League mitigated lost time
Jose Salas was brimming with excitement when he reported to the Miami Marlins’ minor-league spring training camp in early March. It was a prelude to what was supposed to be his first season of professional baseball after being the headliner of the Marlins’ international free agent class in 2019, signing for a $2.8 million bonus.
That excitement was put on pause not even two weeks later as the coronavirus pandemic shut down the sport indefinitely. By late June, Salas and the rest of baseball’s minor-league players found out there would be no minor-league season. Salas, 17, had to wait until Sept. 26, right as MLB’s truncated 60-game regular season was concluding, to get back onto the field in any sort of team-organized activity.
Salas was one of 45 of the Marlins top prospects who took part in the club’s six-week Instructional League at the Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium Complex in Jupiter. Salas was one of 11 players in that group who has yet to play in a minor-league game.
It wasn’t exactly how he thought his first year of professional baseball would unfold, but Salas remained grateful for the opportunity to get any sort of live action with his teammates.
“I was really looking forward to playing but with the pandemic and everything, that didn’t really hold me down,” said Salas, a 6-2, 191-pound shortstop and the No. 19 overall prospect in the Marlins’ organization according to MLB Pipeline. “I just took this instructional league like if it was whatever league the team would have put me in this year. I just kept working harder.”
The Instructional League format worked very similar to how the minor-league camps take place during spring training. They start the day with warmups and an array of individual drills in the morning and then played games in the afternoon. Miami played 12 games with the Washington Nationals’ Instructional League camp, splitting time between the Marlins’ complex in Jupiter and the Nationals’ in West Palm Beach. Intrasquad games filled out the remainder of the six weeks.
“We have a lot of guys down there who are very talented,” CEO Derek Jeter said. “Our philosophy over the last three years is getting athletic players who have an opportunity to be impactful on the field, and we have a lot of those players. I do think missing an entire minor-league season hurt a little bit, so we’re going to do everything in our power to catch them back up to speed. ... For an organization that’s building from the ground up with player development, it’s important that our guys continue to get action here in the offseason so any way that we can do that, we’ll do it.”
Before that, though, most of the players who took part in the Instructional League had to find their own ways to stay in baseball shape for the better part of six months. Players who were not part of a team’s 60-player roster pool were not allowed to be with the club, including at their alternate training site.
Salas, 17, trained with his family. His grandfather, father and uncle all played professionally in Venezuela. He sent video of his batting practice and defense drills to Marlins coaches to get additional feedback. He’s a switch-hitter who shows some power potential as well as the arm strength and quick thinking to play shortstop long-term, although second base could always be a backup plan.
“With Jose Salas, the passion he has, you see he’s an athletic batter right away,” director of international operations Fernando Seguignol said last year. “Besides that, it’s his actions. Smooth actions, down the middle of the field. He’s going to play at shortstop. And then when you start seeing them hit, you’ll see the bat speed as well.”
Salas is also taking the time to learn from Miguel Rojas and Jazz Chisholm, the Marlins’ middle infield combination to end the season, as he embarks on his professional career.
“I’m just trying to get the most out of them,” Salas said. “Just trying to look up to them, trying to see what they do, think like them. That really helped me feel a little more comfortable with the system.”
His goal at this stage in his career is to simply get as many live at-bats as he could more so than focusing on a specific aspect of his game.
“For me, it’s really just getting the playing time,” Salas said, “because I have been training during the offseason really hard.”
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