Marlins optimistic entering Year 2 under Clayton McCullough after late push in 2025
Clayton McCullough knew it would be impossible to fully stay away from baseball in the offseason. There’s always business to attend to, moves and decisions that could be made at just about any point.
But McCullough did find some time to detach from his job and prioritize his personal life following his first season as the Miami Marlins’ manager. There was a vacation to Paris. There was quality time with his three children, including coaching his daughter’s basketball team — a group of 6 and 7 years olds that “finished strong” in a season that was more about “trying to dribble instead of just run” rather than setting plays.
“Those are the things that I most look forward to in the offseason,” McCullough said, “knowing that the job’s never really that far away. There’s always things going on, but it does allow me a little bit of a time to separate things a little bit and recharge, reinvest into those that unfortunately just miss out on so much during the year.”
The whirlwind and the grind that is the Major League Baseball season is about to begin again for McCullough, with the Marlins reporting for spring training next week. Pitchers and catchers have their first workout in Jupiter on Wednesday. The team’s first full-squad workout is Jan. 16. Grapefruit League action begins Feb. 21. And then Opening Day is March 27 against the Colorado Rockies at loanDepot park.
The Marlins are coming off a surprising 2025 season in which they went 79-83 and were in the thick of the playoff race until the very end of the regular season after climbing back from being 15 game under .500 in mid-June. They have momentum to build upon.
“Just a lot of gritty wins,” pitcher Max Meyer said. “We were never out of a ball game and you could just tell that everyone wanted to fight.”
That’s the mindset McCullough hopes his team takes into this season, where they will once again be underdogs in a heavily competitive National League East but has the understanding of what it takes to contend if it can put together another all-around effort.
“That’s the hope, right? That we get into every year — the middle and late part of September — and we are playing games that we’re in the mix to make the postseason,” McCullough said Friday at the team’s media day at loanDepot park. “That’s what we all do this for.”
That said, getting close — simply being in the mix — can not be the standard. McCullough praised his team — “a group of less experienced players” — for showing “a lot of resiliency, grit, toughness” to turn heads late in the season.
Now, it’s a matter of how they parlay that into a successful 2026 season.
“We’ll lean into that,” McCullough said, “because winning in the postseason also requires you have to be tough. You have to be willing to take shots and be able to get right back up and go respond. Our group showed a really high level of resiliency and relentlessness throughout the season.”
McCullough played a role in that.
Like his team, he went through his share of lumps early in his first season as manager after spending the past four seasons as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ first base coach and 16 seasons prior to that in the minor-league ranks with the Toronto Blue Jays (2006-2014) and Dodgers (2015-2020).
But he earned the trust of his clubhouse, which was paramount to the team’s success late.
“He’s perfect for our group,” third baseman Connor Norby said. “He understands the youth. He understands the veterans that we have — which it feels like there aren’t many, but that’s who we are. That’s the Miami Marlins. ... He’s been great since Day 1. He’s an ear that he’ll listen to you. He’ll talk with you all the time. He knows when you’re down. He knows when you’re up, trying to keep you in that state where you need to be, that easy state where everything kind of flows and you can roll with the punches, whether they’re good or bad. But I think he has grown a ton from last year, especially from the beginning to the end. Obviously, everyone else did as well, and I love playing for him.”
Added utility player Javier Sanoja, who won a Gold Glove last season in his first season as an MLB regular: “It’s that energy that he transmits to all the players. He’s hungry to win a game every single day, and he’s been giving us that advice. You’re not given anything for free on the field. You’ve got to always fight. And he did it last year, towards the end of the season, he lifted us up, and we finished strong.”
The biggest thing McCullough learned from his first season as an MLB skipper?
“You can’t communicate enough,” McCullough said. “And I think it was some of those things where you feel like you know that and you understand that. But until having to go through it — and I know there were certainly times when I could have done a better job, and I know this year I need to do a better job, not only with players but our staff and front office — but the ability to be available and to be as transparent and honest as you can, I think are really important qualities. Hopefully I can take all the things that happened last season and be able to improve upon areas which I know that there were times I should have had this conversation, or should have had more foresight into this. So that’s an area I certainly would like to continue to be better at as I move forward.”
And moving forward, there is some promise on this still-young Marlins team.
Outfielder Kyle Stowers emerged as an All-Star and was trending toward receiving down-ballot MVP votes before his season ended with a left oblique strain in mid-August. Fellow outfielder Jakob Marsee put together a solid two-month debut, hitting .292 with an .841 on-base-plus-slugging mark, 33 RBI, 14 stolen bases and 28 runs scored in 55 games while playing quality center field. The two of them plus potentially prospect Owen Caissie could form the team’s starting outfield for years to come.
Shortstop Otto Lopez and second baseman Xavier Edwards formed a steady middle-infield tandem. Miami does need to sort out its corner infield spots. Norby and Graham Pauley are the main contenders at third base while a handful of players (including outfielder Griffin Conine and offseason signing Christopher Morel) among the players competing for playing time at first base.
Agustin Ramirez and Liam Hicks enter the season as Miami’s catchers, though top prospect Joe Mack could be an early call-up.
Sandy Alcantara and Eury Perez will headline a starting rotation that has as many as eight players competing for spots even after the departures of Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers via trade.
And the team signed closer Pete Fairbanks to beef up the back end of a bullpen that was relied upon a lot last season (Miami’s 631 1/3 innings pitched by relievers were the fifth-most in MLB).
“We know that we still have a good team,” Lopez said, “and we can prove that we can do more than what we did last year. We can do a lot of more.”
.JPG)