MIAMI – “Hit strikes hard.”
Seems simple enough.
New Marlins hitting coach Dillon Lawson’s hitting philosophy revolves around that strategy, one that stems from his time as a Minor League hitting coach with the Astros’ organization from 2016-18. He brought it over during his tenures with the Yankees (‘19-23) and Red Sox (‘25-26) before landing with the Marlins and reuniting with director of hitting Joe Migliaccio and assistant hitting coach Chris Hess.
But what exactly does it entail?
“When you talk about a process, [there are] some things that you can control,” Lawson said. “We want to control the strike zone. We want to control our approach. Ideally, we want to control our swing mechanics. There's quite a large variety in what can work, but we want to be consistent with that. The goal is to 'hit strikes hard.' Without going too deep in how we got it that simple, but it was several iterations, and I think it's something that even if you don't know much about baseball, you can understand what we're trying to say there with ‘hit strikes hard.’”
Lawson, who joined the Marlins’ organization in July as a roving hitting coach, has had time to observe the position players in person or on video. So far this offseason, he has met up with Florida-based players like National League Silver Slugger finalist Otto Lopez, Joe Mack and Owen Caissie. He has held remote meetings with others.
Through his observations, Lawson sees a versatile lineup capable of scoring in a variety of ways highlighted by speed and extra-base hits.
In 2026, the Marlins ranked as follows in the Majors:
- Third in triples (37)
- Fourth in stolen bases (163)
- Tied for fifth in on-base percentage (.326)
- Seventh in average (.249)
- Ninth in hits (1,347)
- Tied for ninth in OPS (.726)
- Tied for 11th in FanGraphs’ offensive value
- Tied for 16th in slugging percentage (.400)
- 18th in runs per game (4.41)
Although the Marlins' 168 home runs ranked 23rd, they were fifth most in franchise history. Nine hit double-digit homers, tying a franchise record (2006) and tying for the fourth-most in the Majors.
Miami's 163 steals were third-most in franchise history, with an NL-high 28 steals of third base. The 2026 club was the second team in franchise history (also 2002) to have four players with at least 20 stolen bases: Lopez (34), Esteury Ruiz (34), Jakob Marsee (23) and Xavier Edwards (21).
“You can be a very productive individual player with two completely different styles,” Lawson said. “Now we need to really think about how this works as an entire lineup. And so instead of just thinking about this individual and then that individual and stacking up individuals, nine of them, and just hoping for the best, we're going to help everyone maximize their own abilities, and in turn, that's going to help the team. But we're also going to play and try and score as a group.”
The team’s offensive identity at the end of the day will come down to the personnel put in place for Lawson to work with. It is then up to him to maximize the run production based on the group. He wants the club to have everything in its toolkit – from the ability to bunt to homer to hit a backside single.
The goal is to maximize contact rate and power; certain situations will call for one more than the other.
“When we're trying to maximize offense, we've got to be creative, and we've got to understand that there's a lot of ways to score runs, and we don't have to necessarily be so rigid,” Lawson said.
“It is a balancing act. At the end of the day, most players aren't going to change their player profile, but we can help them maximize what they're bringing to the table by either making adjustments or different types of optimizing given their player package, what they're already bringing to the table. We've got some guys with real raw power, and that had some breakout seasons, and partially because they were able to even make 1 percent more contact. And sometimes that small of an improvement really does pay large dividends.”