Marlins To Trade Liam Hicks To Rays

In any case, the 27-year-old Hicks should provide an offensive upgrade for a top-heavy Tampa Bay lineup. He’s hitting .282/.363/.432 with 14 home runs across 409 plate appearances. Hicks has walked at a solid 9.8% clip while striking out just 9.5% of the time, one of the lowest rates in MLB. He’s one of five hitters (min. 400 PAs) with more walks than strikeouts.

Hicks has foundational plate discipline skills. He rarely expands the strike zone and is almost impossible to beat within the zone. That should give him a strong on-base floor. It’s more questionable if he can maintain the kind of power production he’s shown this year. Hicks has below-average bat speed and ranks near the bottom of the league in average exit velocity and hard contact rate. He had never hit more than six home runs in an MLB or minor league season before this year.

Even if Hicks regresses from a power perspective, the on-base ability should make him one of the better offensive catchers in the league. Miami has one of the sport’s best catching prospects in Joe Mack, which has pushed Hicks more frequently to first base or designated hitter. That’s a much higher bar to clear offensively, which is why the Marlins were open to moving him despite being within a game and a half of a Wild Card spot.

Hicks is more of a bat-first option who’s passable but not great defensively. Public receiving metrics grade him as a league average pitch framer and blocker. The main drawback is his susceptibility to the running game. He has thrown out just 12% of attempted base stealers in his career and ranks in the bottom half of the league in average pop time. Mack is already one of the best in the game at throwing out runners, one of the reasons he pushed Hicks off the position.

Presuming no changes to the service time structure in the next CBA, the Rays will have Hicks under club control for four and a half seasons. He won’t be eligible for arbitration until the 2027-28 offseason. Tampa Bay doesn’t have many first base or designated hitter at-bats to offer in the short term, so Hicks should be close to a full-time catcher for the stretch run.

The move is unlikely to be popular in the Miami clubhouse. The Fish are very much in the Wild Card hunt and just traded one of their most productive hitters for prospects. That said, the sequence is a nice bit of business for the Marlins overall. Hicks has been an excellent find for a Rule 5 pick and now nets them three solid prospects.

Taylor, a lefty-hitting infielder, was Tampa Bay’s first round pick in 2023. (That was the final season in which Miami’s baseball operations president Peter Bendix was in the Rays’ front office.) The TCU product entered pro ball as a top prospect, then plummeted down the organizational rankings with a terrible 2025 season in Double-A. Taylor has had a huge rebound at the same level, hitting .284/.384/.513 with 17 homers and 20 steals in 88 games. He’s drawing walks at an excellent 13.4% clip against a league averse 22.9% strikeout rate.

Those numbers aren’t as impressive as they’d be if Taylor weren’t already 24 and repeating the level. That makes him a tricky evaluation. Baseball America had him outside their top 30 prospects in the Tampa Bay system. He ranked 16th in the organization at MLB Pipeline. On the other hand, Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski of FanGraphs slot him sixth among Rays prospects and in the back half of their overall top 100.

Taylor will need to be added to the 40-man roster at season’s end to stay out of the Rule 5 draft. He’ll likely finish the year at Triple-A Jacksonville and should be in the mix for Miami’s starting third base job next season. Miami hasn’t gotten much from their third basemen, with former top prospect Connor Norby struggling to seize the job.

Santana and Kisting each landed in the back third of Tampa Bay’s top 30 prospects at MLB Pipeline. They’re outside the top 30 at Baseball America and FanGraphs, though that’s largely a credit to the depth of the Tampa Bay system.

Kisting, a 6’5″ right-hander, came over from Minnesota last offseason for middle reliever Eric Orze. A former 14th-round pick out of Bradley University, he’s having an excellent year at High-A Bowling Green. Kisting has fanned 29% of opponents against a sub-6% walk rate while turning in a sub-2.00 ERA across 86 innings. He sits in the low-90s and doesn’t have any premium secondary stuff but has strong command and projects as a back-end starter.

Santana, 21, was a supplemental first-round pick in the same ’23 class in which the Rays added Taylor. He’s a Miami-area native who plays a plus defensive shortstop. Santana has a contact-oriented offensive approach and only has eight professional home runs. Three of those have come this season, as he’s hitting .316/.381/.400 with 23 steals and a minuscule 9.5% strikeout rate in High-A. He won’t be eligible for the Rule 5 draft until the 2027-28 offseason.

Jeff Passan of ESPN first reported the Rays were acquiring Hicks. Will Sammon of The Athletic had Taylor leading a three-prospect return. Joel Sherman of The New York Post was first on Santana and Kisting.

Respective images courtesy of Imagn Images.