The Miami Marlins drew attention around Major League Baseball in September when they became the first club to call pitches from the dugout, but that move represents only a fraction of a wider overhaul. The organization has eliminated traditional bullpen sessions and soft-toss batting practice, replacing them with hyper-competitive alternatives designed to continuously challenge players.
The Marlins are pushing in-season development in ways few clubs openly embrace, emphasizing increases in pitch velocity and bat speed and reviving aggressive base stealing in the minors. Coaches say the dugout pitch-calling experiment began during the club’s Spring Breakout and extended through all of the Marlins’ minor-league affiliates over the 2025 season, with staff reporting efficient communication and more conversation between innings.
Those changes come amid a long and uneven franchise history. The Marlins have won two championships but posted 25 losing records in 33 seasons. Nineteen seasons finished with the lowest attendance in the National League, and over the past 14 years the club ranked in the bottom five in payroll 11 times. The organization has repeatedly dismantled star-laden rosters, a cycle its leaders say they must break to survive against richer competitors.
Leadership change has driven the new direction. Peter Bendix, who joined the Marlins late in 2023 after a 15-year tenure with the Tampa Bay Rays, has emphasized infrastructure and open-mindedness. Bendix said the franchise must be different and accept that not every experiment will work, adding that the organization needs to “take risks” and “push those boundaries.” General manager Gabe Kapler has urged the club to “innovate” and stressed a guiding principle encapsulated inside the organization: get better players, get players better and get players better faster. Kapler also emphasized “believing in human spirit.”
The Marlins have invested in facilities to support the approach, spending $108 million to renovate their spring training complex and planning adjacent pitching and hitting labs. Executives say those upgrades, combined with on-field experimentation, are part of a concerted effort to find marginal advantages where resources are limited.
