The Marlins will have an open competition at second base. Isan Diaz is embracing it
The opportunity was in front of Isan Diaz. Even after a rough rookie season, Diaz was essentially penciled in as the Miami Marlins’ starting second baseman for 2020 when spring training began. The Marlins wanted to see a full season from Diaz to properly formulate an opinion on if he could be their long-term starter at the position.
That opportunity faded, and Diaz understands his job as starting second baseman is anything but secure going into the 2021 season. The Marlins are trying to build off the momentum of last season’s playoff run, and new Marlins general manager Kim Ng said second base is essentially an open competition at this point, a position battle that will be decided in spring training.
Diaz will get his opportunities again, but so will Jazz Chisholm, the Marlins’ fourth-ranked prospect according to MLB Pipeline who started 17 games in September (11 at second base) and is also trying to prove he can be a long-term part of the Marlins’ plans. Chisholm, like Diaz, is a left-handed hitter.
Diaz knows the expectations. He knows the situation.
But he doesn’t plan to put more pressure on himself as a competition for playing time picks up.
“I’ll stay the same,” Diaz said Friday. “I think honestly it’ll just make me work harder. I know what I have to do and what I have to do to accomplish it. On we go. We’ll see what happens in 2021.”
Diaz, one of four players the Marlins acquired in the Christian Yelich trade (along with Monte Harrison, Lewis Brinson and Jordan Yamamoto) played just seven games in the shortened 60-game regular season. He played two games in the Marlins’ series-opening road series against the Philadelphia Phillies before opting out midway through the team’s weeklong quarantine that resulted from their coronavirus outbreak (it should be noted that Diaz never tested positive for COVID-19 during that stretch). At the time, Diaz called the decision a “difficult choice,” but “the best one for me and my overall well-being” in an Aug. 1 Instagram story post.
He had a change of heart and applied for reinstatement. Diaz returned to the active roster on Sept. 10 but played in just five games before a left groin strain ended his season.
“It was a roller coaster, man,” Diaz said.
Diaz posted a .182 average with one RBI, three runs and seven strikeouts in 22 at-bats over those seven games. For his career, he’s hitting .174 with a .251 on-base percentage over 56 games.
As a result, he spent the bulk of the season watching from a distance as the Marlins overcame their early season COVID-19 outbreak and surprised major-league baseball by clinching their first playoff appearance since 2003.
“I’ll tell you one thing: I learned a lot,” Diaz said. “It was very difficult, not only for me but everyone else. There’s a lot of things that come into play. Am I upset about what happened throughout the year? No. I think everything happens for a reason. Some people learn different ways and some people don’t. I’m happy for our team, our organization, the hard work they put in this year and how far they made it. We’re just gonna continue to look back on this year as a positive, not a negative, so we can come back next year and start where we left off.”
The biggest thing that Diaz said he learned?
“Never look back,” he said. “Never look back on what you did in the past and that kind of relates to the game as well. You’ve got to move forward. You’ve got to look to the next day and you got to just continue to stay focused.”
He has another season, another opportunity, on the horizon.
.JPG)