Big outings by Max Meyer, Eury Perez highlight latest Miami Marlins prospect performances
It was a good week for two of the Miami Marlins’ prized starting pitching prospects, with Max Meyer and Eury Perez each throwing gems in their respective starts.
Meyer on Saturday continued his torrid start to the season for the Triple A Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. The 23-year-old and No. 33 overall prospect in baseball according to MLB Pipeline on Saturday gave up just one run on six hits and one walk with six strikeouts in 6 2/ 3 innings. He threw 92 pitches.
It was his longest outing of his professional baseball career, surpassing the six innings that he threw on six different occasions last season while with the Double A Pensacola Blue Wahoos. His previous high this season was 5 2/3 innings.
On the season, Meyer has a 1.71 ERA with 33 strikeouts against six walks over 26 1/3 innings. Opponents are hitting just .158 against him and he has yet to allow more than two earned runs in any of his starts. The consistency in the results has been there even when he’s had off nights with his command.
Now, he’s showing he can work deep into games.
Perez, meanwhile, might have finally had his breakthrough outing. After three rocky outings to start his Double A career (7.50 ERA, 10 earned runs allowed in 12 innings), the 19-year-old threw five innings of one-hit ball while striking out a career-high 12 hitters on Friday.
It was the type of start the Marlins hope to see consistently from Perez, ranked as the No. 39 overall prospect in baseball.
Is JJ Bleday figuring things out?
The overall numbers still aren’t great at the plate so far this season for the Marlins’ 2019 first-round pick — a .190 batting average and .675 on-base-plus-slugging-mark — but Bleday has started to string together some offensive production with Triple A Jacksonville.
The outfielder, ranked as baseball’s No. 67 overall prospect, has hits in eight of his last 10 games, a stretch that includes a .237 average (9 for 38) with two doubles, two home runs, 7 RBI and 8 runs scored.
Others of note
▪ First baseman Lewin Diaz is up to a team-leaning 20 RBI for Triple A Jacksonville. He hit an opposite-field home run on Sunday as part of his first three-hit game of the season
▪ Right-handed pitcher Bryan Hoeing, recently moved up to the No. 30 overall prospect in Miami’s system, dropped his season ERA to 0.35 through four starts in Double A Pensacola after throwing 7 shutout innings with 8 strikeouts on Sunday.
▪ Infielder Charles LeBlanc, the first player the Marlins acquired in minor-league portion of Rule 5 draft this offseason, is hitting .387 with an 1.133 OPS over his first 20 games with Triple A Jacksonville. He has six home runs, four doubles, 18 RBI and 12 runs scored.
▪ After a sluggish start at the plate, first baseman Troy Johnston has safely reached base in each of his last 10 games. Johnston is hitting .314 with a .843 OPS in that span.
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