The Marlins have accumulated the fifth-most WAR of any team from their catchers this year. Their backstops have a collective 133 wRC+ at the position, third highest in baseball. This has been one of the team’s biggest strengths to start this season, so it was a bit of a surprise to see Miami make a pretty significant change at the position earlier this week. On Monday, the Marlins optioned Agustín Ramírez to Triple-A, calling up top catching prospect Joe Mack to take his place on the big league roster. The reason why they felt comfortable making this swap has been the standout play of Liam Hicks, the much less-heralded catcher also in his second big league season.
As Miami’s top overall prospect a year ago, Ramírez spent nearly the entire season in the majors. He put up a .231/.287/.413 slash line (91 wRC+) in 136 games as a rookie. Despite the nearly league-average batting line, he accumulated exactly 0.0 WAR because of some pretty atrocious defensive numbers. Per Statcast, he had the second-lowest Fielding Run Value of any catcher with at least 500 innings at the position. He was actually a slightly above-average pitch framer, but his throwing and blocking grades were the worst in baseball.
Through a month of play this year, Ramírez’s bat hasn’t really taken a step forward; his 86 wRC+ is a hair below what he accomplished last season, though the shape of his production looks a little different. His walk rate is nearly four points higher than it was in 2025, but his power output has cratered thanks to a six-point drop in barrel rate. The defense hasn’t improved either, and so the Marlins sent him back to Triple-A to work on his skills behind the plate. Here’s how manager Clayton McCullough put it on Monday:
“It got to the point where it is performance and felt like, especially on the defensive side of things, that while he put in a lot of good work this offseason and had seen some glimpse of things getting better, that part of his game needs to continue to improve to be able to catch up here for us.”
Ramírez will almost certainly get another shot to show he can make an impact in the big leagues — he was a highly regarded prospect and the centerpiece of the Jazz Chisholm Jr. trade in 2024 — but this is a bit of a crossroads moment for him early in his career. Can he improve enough behind the plate to stick at catcher, or is a more permanent switch to first base or designated hitter in his future? The team is giving him this opportunity to continue developing his defensive skills in a less pressure-filled environment. We’ll see if he can actually make the required adjustments.
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I’ve buried the lede here a bit. Obviously, the Marlins have gotten so much production from their catchers despite Ramírez because of a breakout season from Hicks. He was a Rule 5 selection last year and spent the entire season on Miami’s big league roster. He acquitted himself well considering he had never played above Double-A during his minor league career; he posted a .247/.346/.346 slash line (98 wRC+) in 119 games, splitting time between backing up Ramírez, and playing first base and DH.
During the offseason, Michael Baumann identified Hicks as one of a handful of batters who exhibited a lot of the skills that undergirded the breakouts of Maikel Garcia and Geraldo Perdomo. His skillset featured an advanced understanding of the strike zone and excellent bat-to-ball skills, but he was mostly let down by a severe lack of contact quality. Last year, among batters with at least 300 plate appearances, Hicks ran the seventh-lowest chase rate (17.6%) and the 12th-highest zone contact rate (93.1%), but his hard-hit rate was just 27.7%, 16th lowest in baseball.
The Marlins recognized Hicks’ strong foundation and set him up with an offseason program to help him increase his bat speed. It’s a familiar tradeoff: A hitter with strong bat-to-ball skills sacrifices some of that ability to put the ball in play with a bit more authority. Here’s what he had to say about his offseason work in an interview with Christina De Nicola of MLB.com back on March 31:
“I think that’s what I’ve been training the whole offseason is just getting that ‘A swing’ off pretty much every time, because I know that my bat to ball is good, and it’s been good, so not being afraid to strike out as much in the past, just because I know that even when I’m taking those swings, I still have a high likelihood of putting the ball in play.”
While his average bat speed is up half a tick, the biggest change to his swing has been the addition of a big leg kick. You can see how dramatically different his load looks in this pair of clips, the first showing a home run from 2025 and the second a homer from this year:
His revamped swing just looks like it’s geared for harder contact, even if his average swing speed isn’t all that improved. The results back this up:
Liam Hicks, Batted Ball Peripherals
| Year | BatSpd | EV90 | Hard Hit% | Barrel% | Pull AIR% | xwOBACON | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 67.4 | 100.6 | 27.7% | 3.5% | 14.9% | .308 | .313 |
| 2026 | 67.9 | 102.6 | 41.2% | 7.8% | 21.6% | .388 | .403 |
His hard-hit rate has increased by 13.5 percentage points, the fifth-largest jump of any qualified batter this year. He’s barreling the ball a lot more often, he’s pulling the ball in the air more, his 90th percentile exit velocity is up two ticks, and his expected wOBA on contact is a whopping 80 points higher. By every significant batted ball metric, he’s impacting the ball with much more authority, and that’s resulted in a .319/.372/.584 slash line, good for a 158 wRC+. He blasted his ninth home run of the season on Thursday, already surpassing his total of six from last year.
Here’s the incredible thing about Hicks’ transformation: He’s actually lowered his strikeout rate by a little over five percentage points, the 22nd-largest drop among qualified batters this year. With his newfound power, he’s swinging a lot more often at pitches both in and out of the zone. Despite his slightly higher chase rate, though, his whiff rate has fallen slightly, and his contact rate is all the way up at 92.1%. He’s not only making better contact, he has also managed to make even more of it — he has figured out a way to have his cake and eat it, too.
Defensively, Hicks doesn’t stand out all that much, grading out slightly below average per FRV and slightly above average per DRS. But that’s where Mack enters the picture. Ranked 56th on our 2026 Top 100 Prospects list, he’s drawn outstanding scouting reports for his defensive work behind the plate, particularly for his throwing arm. Because of his long swing, Mack comes with some risk as a hitter, but he has made some progress at the plate in the minor leagues, dropping his Triple-A strikeout rate from 27.9% in 2025 to 21.4% this season. Fewer punchouts is definitely a good thing, but that small minor league sample isn’t necessarily proof that he has solved his contact issues. Here are Eric Longenhagen’s notes about how Mack’s approach has changed early this year:
“Nothing dramatically different in Mack’s splits. He is, however, swinging less: He’s dropped his swing rate from 50% last year to 44% this year, and his chase rate from 33% to 31%. He’s missing secondary pitches a lot (59% contact rate versus non-fastballs in 2025, 62% so far in 2026), and there are no mechanical tweaks I can see. Same guy, hit tool risk and volatility, but athletic and powerful enough to slug and clear the offensive bar at catcher.”
The Marlins don’t need Mack to carry the load at catcher since Hicks has been hitting so well, but it could be interesting to see how they mix and match at the position. The team had been pretty strictly protecting Hicks from left-handed pitching this year; his start at catcher on Thursday was just his second start against a southpaw in 2026. Unfortunately, because Mack is also a left-handed batter, a straight platoon probably isn’t in the cards. Instead, the Marlins will probably continue using Hicks at first base and designated hitter to keep his bat in the lineup while Mack gets the majority of playing time behind the plate.
With Hicks mashing at the plate and Mack providing a significant defensive upgrade behind it, there doesn’t seem to be room on the big league roster for Ramírez for the foreseeable future. But if Ramírez’s defense eventually takes enough of a step forward for him to get at least part-time reps in the majors, the Marlins could have a bit of a logjam at catcher. That wouldn’t be as much of an issue for them as it would be for other teams, though, considering Hicks also plays first base and Ramírez bats right-handed. However this plays out, with two backstops or three, Miami is shaping up to have one of the better catching groups in baseball.