This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola’s Marlins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO – Eight Marlins prospects, headlined by outfielders Dillon Lewis and Max Williams, will represent the organization at the Arizona Fall League.
Considered the premier league for baseball’s top prospects, the AFL consists of six teams comprised of all 30 Major League organizations. The Marlins’ prospects will compete alongside members of the Braves, Dodgers, Pirates and White Sox for the Glendale Desert Dogs.
Action begins on Oct. 3 and goes through Nov. 1.
The eight Marlins are:
RHP Samuel Caprio
LHP Brayan Mendoza
LHP Emmett Olson
RHP Tristan Stevens
RHP Alex Williams
INF Carter Johnson
OF Dillon Lewis (Miami’s No. 11 prospect)
OF Max Williams (Miami’s No. 27 prospect)
More on the Arizona Fall League:
• Past champions | Awards | All-time roster
• Tickets | Shop | Schedule | Complete coverage
“D-Lew and Max missed a bunch of time [with injuries],” director of player development Rachel Balkovec said. “Carter, [it’ll] just be good for him to get more at-bats and the level of competition matches up with kind of what he needs there.”
Lewis, who was a non-roster invitee at big league camp this spring, came over in the Ryan Weathers trade with the Yankees. The 23-year-old hit .242/.302/.460 with 12 doubles, four triples and 18 homers in 89 games for Double-A Pensacola.
Williams, whom the Marlins selected in the third round of the 2025 MLB Draft out of Florida State University, appeared at three levels during his first full professional season. In 48 games, the 22-year-old batted .326/.399/.620 with 10 doubles and 15 homers.
Johnson, meanwhile, broke out in his third Minor League campaign. A second-round pick in the 2024 MLB Draft out of Oxford High School in Alabama, the 20-year-old Johnson received a promotion from Single-A Jupiter to High-A Beloit and continued making strides. Between the two levels, he slashed .240/.335/.410 with 25 doubles, three triples and 14 homers in 113 games.
“I give him a lot of credit in changing his mentality,” Balkovec said. “Coming out of high school, he really struggled. Maybe at first kind of struggled to buy into training his weaknesses and accepting his weaknesses and then diving into them. And this year, he's just done a fantastic job with that. He wants the hard stuff. He wants the stuff that he's not good at, and we've seen it play out at the plate that he's really bought into training really difficult, so that he prepares for what he's actually going to face.”