Marlins All-Star Escapes Serious Injury but Will Miss Spring Training Games

The best news would have been no injury. But the Miami Marlins got the next best news they could have on All-Star outfielder Kyle Stowers.

Stowers now has a one-to-two-week timetable to return to game action according to manager Clayton McCullough, as reported by MLB.com. He had what the manager called a “very minor” right hamstring strain. While he won’t play in a game for at least a week, he will begin to get at-bats on the back fields in Jupiter, Fla., in the next few days, assuming everything remains on track.

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It’s about as good as the Marlins could have asked for after Stowers was scratched from Saturday’s spring training game against the St. Louis Cardinals. He underwent imaging to detect the strain. McCullough said there wasn’t a specific play that led to the injury.

Kyle Stowers’ Importance to Marlins

The 28-year-old slugger emerged as one of the best hitters on the team last season as he claimed his first National League All Star game berth. He slashed .288/.368/.544 with 25 home runs and 73 RBI. During the season he became the first Marlin in nearly a decade to be named the National League Player of the Month.

In July, he slashed .364/.451/.818 with 16 runs, five doubles, 10 home runs, and 20 RBI.

He’s found a home in Miami after he was up-and-down with the Baltimore Orioles since he made his Major League debut in 2022. One of the top outfield prospects in the system, he could never get a foothold on the Major League roster due to the players in front of him. At the 2024 trade deadline, the Orioles traded him and second baseman Connor Norby for left-handed starting pitcher Trevor Rogers.

Stowers was originally the Orioles’ competitive balance pick in the 2019 MLB draft out of Stanford.

Without Stowers in the lineup, that offers the outfielders on the 40-man roster and the non-roster invitation list more playing time for at least the next week. The 40-man roster includes Owen Caissie, Griffin Conine, Heriberto Hernández, Jakob Marsee, Christopher Morel and Esteury Ruiz. Caissie is preparing to join Team Canada for the World Baseball Classic. Morel is working at first base, which is where Miami hopes to use him in 2026.

The non-roster infielders include Kemp Alderman, Matthew Etzel, Daniel Johnson, Brendan Jones, Dillon Lewis, Andrew Pintar and Fenwick Trimble.