‘Lo and behold, I’m here’: Miami Marlins call up 2019 first-round pick JJ Bleday

JJ Bleday, the Miami Marlins’ first-round pick in 2019, grew up a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. His family lived in Titusville, Pennsylvania — about a two-hour drive from Pittsburgh — before moving to the Panama City Beach area in Florida prior to his junior year of high school. He remembered watching the likes of Neil Walker and Francisco Cervelli, a pair of players who ultimately spent a year apiece with the Marlins organization as Bleday began his professional baseball career.

Bleday said that in the back of his mind there was always the hope that he would make his MLB debut at PNC Park, even if that meant doing so from the visiting dugout.

“Lo and behold,” Bleday said Saturday from that PNC Park visiting dugout, “I’m here.”

Indeed, Bleday’s time has come.

The Marlins selected Bleday’s contract prior to Saturday’s game against the Pirates. He replaces outfielder Jorge Soler, who was placed on the injured list with back spams.

Bleday, the fourth-ranked prospect in Miami’s system according to MLB Pipeline, was not in the starting lineup on Saturday but made his MLB debut when he entered the game in left field in the bottom of the seventh inning and drew a one-out walk in the ninth inning of the eventual 1-0 loss.

“It still hasn’t really set in yet,” said Bleday, who arrived in Pittsburgh around 1 p.m. Saturday. “I’m just going through it and getting advice from these older guys and just soaking everything in.”

Prior to the call up, Bleday has spent the entirety of the season to this point with the Triple A Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. His batting average is low, just .228, and his strikeout rate is high (27 percent) but he has a .835 on-base-plus slugging percentage due to his ability to draw walks (60 in 367 plate appearances) and his knack for getting extra base hits (20 home runs and 13 doubles among his 69 hits). He has also logged 52 RBI and scored 54 runs.

“When we took JJ, one of the big conversations was is he a hitter with power? Is he a power hitter? What is it? The game is kind of defining that,” Marlins senior director of amateur scouting DJ Svihlik said earlier this month. “JJ has turned, at least this year, into this high slug, high on-base percentage guy. If we can collect a few more hits, we would have more of a complete hitter. He’s taken his walks and is showing the power we knew he had. He just needs to take that next step.”

That next step, at least for the short term and potentially longer if he can prove himself, will be in the big leagues should he be added to the active roster. He provides the Marlins with another left-handed bat and a player who can play all three outfield positions.

“Things clicked for him a lot more this year than in the past,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “He’s a guy that we’ve seen in [spring training] for a few years now. I think what I like about him is that everything he does, he does well. He’s a good base runner. He plays defense. He knows what he’s doing on the field. He handles at-bats. Now, it’s going to be a matter of making adjustments at this level.”