Marlins counting on Bleday — ‘He’s a polished player’
Outfielder prospect JJ Bleday hit a home run in the Marlins’ first spring training game of 2021. An MLB debut this year is not out of the question.
The Houston Astros infield had shifted right, expecting him to pull the baseball with his lefthanded swing.
JJ Bleday had other plans. He grounded out his first time at the plate on Sunday, the ball barely staying fair down the first-base line.
He took a pair of pitches during the second plate
appearance in the fifth inning and then, with a 1-2 count, Bleday turned on a fastball from Astros
pitcher Bryan Abreu and sent it deep to left field
for a leadoff, oppositefield home run. It was an exclamation mark on the Marlins’ 6-1 win at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches to begin their 24-game Grapefruit League schedule.
“The main thing,” Bleday said a day later, “is just having the confidence and the trust in your own ability to go out and perform each at-bat at the plate and each opportunity you’re given.”
Eventually, the Marlins hope Bleday will be making this type of impact on their bigleague roster.
Eventually might also become a reality sooner than later.
Bleday, the Marlins’ first-round pick in 2019, is ranked as a consensus top-100 prospect, listed as high as No. 20 by MLB Pipeline and as low as 89 by The Athletic’s Keith Law (Baseball America ranks him at No. 43 and ESPN has him at No. 55). He was highly touted heading into the draft for his consistent hitting in the Cape Cod summer baseball league and for his junior year performance with the College World Series-winning Vanderbilt Commodores.
His consistent approach at the plate — and his priority of putting the ball in play over solely relying on power — along with his ability to play sound defense in the corner outfield spots give Bleday the potential to crack the bigleague roster as early as this season.
“In my mind,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said, “this guy’s not a guy you feel like you say ‘OK, we’ve got to get his outfield play together’ or ‘He’s still developing his baserunning.’ This is a guy that comes from a great program at Vanderbilt. Those guys have been pretty solid. They’re all pretty solid fundamental guys that look like they know what they’re doing. JJ is no exception.”
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel agrees. Bleday needs seasoning — he’s only played in 38 minorleague games and spent last season at the Marlins’ alternate training site — but the tools are there for Bleday to be a big-leaguer.
“I think Bleday might be the quickest moving [of the Marlins’ outfielder prospects],” McDaniel told the Miami Herald before spring training began. “He hasn’t been to Double A yet, but I could easily see him making the big leagues by the end of this year if he hits the way he did at Vanderbilt.”
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IF YOU GO OUT AND PERFORM
... GOOD THINGS ARE GONNA HAPPEN.
JJ Bleday
Bleday isn’t necessarily focusing on that callup right now. He knows the moment will come.
But he also knows that for the moment to come, he needs to stay within himself and keep building on the aspects of his game that got him to pro ball in the first place.
The biggest area Bleday plans to improve this season?
“I think just making my timing consistent,” he said. “I mean, literally, if you go out and perform and you do well, good things are gonna happen.”
Mattingly wants to see that steady progression, too.
“Not looking for anything specific out of JJ,” Mattingly said. “Just looking to see what he looks like in games and where he’s at right now, his timing and things like that. JJ is a polished guy. He’s a polished player. He’s a guy that knows how to defend, knows how to play the game, good baserunner. He does a lot of things well. He’s just a good guy to watch and watch his development.”
As expected, Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler have led the Heat’s push to reach .500 after a slow start to the season.
But there is at least one aspect of the Heat’s turnaround that has caught some by surprise: Secondyear guard Kendrick Nunn has been one of Miami’s most important and effective players through it all.
Nunn continued his impressive stretch with a team-high 24 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 shooting on threes, three rebounds and seven assists to help lead the Butler-less Heat to a 109-99 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday night at AmericanAirlines Arena. Butler missed the game because of right knee inflammation.
“Jimmy trusts us,” Nunn said, with the Heat set to host the Hawks again on Tuesday [7:30 p.m., Fox Sports Sun]. “He believes in us, that we can get the job done with the guys we have on this team. Just coming together and playing for each other. Making plays, just flat out making plays. That’s what it came down to.”
The Heat entered Monday with the longest active winning streak in the NBA at six games and has also won 10 of the past 13 to go from 7-14 to 17-17 in less than four weeks. Miami is at .500 for the first time since Jan. 9.
During the Heat’s 10-3 stretch, Nunn has averaged 17.1 points while shooting 48.8 percent from the field, 43.3 percent on threes and 95 percent from the foul line, 3.8 rebounds 3.2 assists and 1.3 steals. He also owns a quality plus/minus of plus-52 during that 13game span.
Nunn, 25, has started 12 consecutive games after beginning the season in a limited role off the bench.
“Just my preparation. It’s definitely different,” Nunn said when asked where he has improved most this season. “My poise for the game and just reading the game, and being able to make plays in clutch moments, and knocking down
shots. My overall game. I always look at my game overall and not just try to pinpoint one specific thing. I try to get better on both ends of the floor.”
Nunn’s three-point shooting is one area of growth, as he has made
38.5 percent of his threes this season compared to 35 percent last season on basically the same amount of attempts per game.
In February, Nunn shot 43.3 percent from threepoint range on 6.9 attempts per game. For perspective, Heat forward Duncan Robinson and New Orleans Pelicans guard JJ Redick were the only two players in the NBA last season who shot better than 43 percent from deep on six or more three-point attempts per game.
Nunn’s passing and onball reads have also improved this season, and those skills have been on full display over the past week. In the last four games, he has totaled 24 assists and just four turnovers.
Nunn (6-2, 190) has taken steps forward defensively, too. He played an important part in the
Heat’s trapping scheme against Hawks star guard Trae Young on Sunday, helping to limit Young to 15 points on an inefficient 3-of-14 shooting.
“Defensively, he has really helped us,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Nunn, who’s set to become
a restricted free agent next offseason. “This has been a year and a half process of really learning our system, being held accountable to that, growing comfortable and being able to defend different ways. He has the ability to do it, so it really helps, especially against these really quick, skilled guards.
“Then offensively, he’s just constantly in the gym watching film, working on his quarterback reads. It’s not really a mystery how he has gotten better with all of that.”
For the season, Nunn has averaged 14.6 points while shooting 47.5 percent from the field, 38.5 percent on threes and 91.4 percent from the foul line. He shot 43.9 percent from the field, 35 percent on threes and 85 percent from the foul line last season.
That jump in efficiency has made Nunn an essential part of the Heat’s offense. He’s a three-level scorer who has shot 67.1 percent at the rim, 42.4 percent on midrange looks and almost 39 percent from beyond the arc this season.
“I mean we’ve already seen that he can do those things,” Heat guard Goran Dragic said. “Last season, he had a tremendous season. Before the break, he was putting up the same numbers. So we know what he’s capable of doing. The only question with him was consistency. Finally now, I think the last eight or nine games, he has shown that.”
There were questions entering this season whether Nunn could be the player he was for most of last season, when he made the All-Rookie First Team and finished second in the voting for the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award.
Nunn started in each of his 67 regular-season appearances last season and was one of the NBA’s top rookies before the season was suspended in March. He averaged 15.6 points on 44.8 percent shooting from the field and 36.2 percent shooting on threes, 2.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists in 62 games before the pandemic paused play.
But after recovering from a COVID-19 diagnosis in July, Nunn couldn’t pick up where he left off when the Heat’s season resumed in August in the Walt Disney World bubble. His offensive efficiency dropped off and he was moved to a bench role in the playoffs, as he averaged 6.1 points on 39.1 percent shooting, 2.1 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 15 games in the postseason.
Following the addition of Avery Bradley in free agency this past offseason,
Nunn found himself outside of the Heat’s rotation at times early on behind Dragic, Tyler Herro and Bradley on the depth chart of guards. Nunn received three DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision) in the first eight games of the season, but injuries and protocol-related absences pushed Nunn into a more consistent role.
Nunn has made the most of that opportunity to establish himself as a player who needs to be part of the Heat’s rotation until further notice, even when Bradley returns from a right calf strain that has forced him to miss nearly a month of games.
“He has been tremendous for this team, and he still is the player that we want him to be — aggressive to take shots and to make decisions,” Dragic said of Nunn. “He’s playing amazing basketball right now.”