Marlins use No. 14 pick to draft latest standout from Lombard baseball family

MIAMI -- The local kid is staying home.

The Marlins chose shortstop Jacob Lombard out of Miami Gulliver Prep with the No. 14 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft on Saturday afternoon, marking just the third time the franchise has used its first-round selection on a South Florida product (Chris Volstad, 2005, Palm Beach Gardens High and Charles Johnson, 1992, University of Miami.

“I'm really excited for him, and I'm excited for Miami, for South Florida,” said Frankie Piliere, vice president of amateur forecasting and player evaluation initiatives. “The evaluation is the evaluation, and if he was from anywhere, it'd be really great; we'd be just as excited. But I'd be lying. That's an exciting thing. It's an exciting thing for us. It's an exciting thing for him. It's nice to have bonuses like that, where you see the excitement when the pick was announced. You see his family, and hopefully our fans are very excited, too. It's a pretty cool thing.”

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Baseball runs in Lombard’s genes. His father, George, was a Major League outfielder for six seasons. His older brother, George Jr., is the No. 20 prospect in MLB and No. 1 in the Yankees’ system.

However, Jacob Lombard might be the best ballplayer in the family. MLB Pipeline’s No. 5 Draft prospect, the youngest Lombard is a 6-foot-3 right-handed hitter with enough pop in his quick bat and enough juice in his legs to pull off a 30-homer, 30-steal season, according to MLB.com’s Jim Callis. His power and run grades are 60 or better, and he has the skills and baseball IQ to develop into a plus hitter as well.

Miami sees Lombard’s baseball pedigree as a real advantage, especially when it comes time to go from prep to professional baseball. Jacob has already seen what the journey looks like and how difficult it can be.

For Lombard to succeed, he will need to cut down on his swing-and-miss tendencies. Pitchers in showcase events last summer exploited him with fastballs up in the zone. According to The Athletic’s Keith Law, Lombard had a 39% whiff rate during tracked showcase events in 2025.

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While there is some question about Lombard’s overall feel for hitting, there is no debate about his defense. He has everything one needs to play shortstop for a long time, just like his favorite player, the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr. Lombard possesses outstanding athleticism, thanks in part to an upbringing that saw him play multiple sports, including football and soccer, which he has said was his first love. He also spent two years in gymnastics.

“Jacob Lombard is somebody that probably we've known about for really a couple years as one of the most -- if not the most -- talented high school players in the class, as much upside as anybody we could have expected [with the] 14th overall pick, and in general, just a really exciting player,” Piliere said.

Piliere acknowledged that a lot of the Marlins’ staff had even caught some of Lombard’s soccer matches in Pinecrest.

“He's very well known on that front, and it's going to be very interesting to see as he puts all his time into baseball; we think he's going to get even better,” Piliere said. “He's already very talented and very accomplished in his baseball career. I think it's only going to blossom from here.”

If everything comes together, Lombard possesses true superstar potential. And he can’t wait for the day when he gets to show it off on the same big league field as his brother. In fact, he said during a recent interview on the MLB Pipeline Podcast that he thinks about playing with George Jr. in the Majors every day.

“We're thrilled,” president of baseball operations Peter Bendix said. “We didn't expect that we'd be able to get a player like Jacob Lombard with the pick that we had here. It's truly a testament to Frankie, to our entire amateur staff, that we were really thorough in our coverage of a player that, frankly, we didn't think was going to be available to us. That could have been an excuse to not do the work that was required to get comfortable to understand who this player is, but we did a ton of work on him.

“[I] feel like we know his strengths, his weaknesses. He's an incredible human, comes from an incredible family. Obviously, a local kid and somebody that we couldn't be more excited to bring into the organization.”