Marlins Boss Clayton McCullough Describes Upcoming Season in One Word

The Miami Marlins manager has a way with words and he has a different one for 2026 season

Miami Marlins pitcher Eury Pérez gets taken out of the game by manager Clayton McCullough | Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

Miami Marlins manager Clayton McCullough joined his second FanFest for the Marlins as he enters his second season with the ballclub. 

The way he described the 2025 season is “optimism.” As for the 2026 season, he has a different vocabulary. 

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Clayton McCullough Describes the Upcoming Season 

Miami Marlins manager Clayton McCullough walks off the field | Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

The 44-year-old McCullough has the mindset of a manager who loves to win and hates to lose. As much of a player-friendly coach as he can be, he wants to win more than anything. 

McCullough knows that his second season as the manager will be much more challenging, but he accepts the challenge and has the right attitude to do everything in his power to lead the team to the postseason. 

“This year always brings a level of optimism,” McCullough said. “I think with where we feel like the strides we made last year and that this year is going to be more difficult and from day one of spring training, having a real sense of urgency to try to win every day and not look too far ahead into the calendar is going to be important, but that we know that while we’re very proud of a lot of the work that was done last year.” 

So, urgency is the watch word for the Marlins in 2026.

The Marlins caught the baseball world by surprise. If someone had predicted and bet their money that the Marlins would lose 100 games in 2025, then that person would lose a lot of money. McCullough led the Marlins to a 79-83 record, which was a good progress from the previous season. 

His goal is to continue to improve in every aspect of the game. The team is hungry to win more games for the new season. 

“We were disappointed we ended up ultimately coming up short with a chance to play in the postseason,” McCullough said. “We wanted to take a step back and look at the outset of even the off-season, leading into the gear, what we were hoping organizationally to try to put in place. I think we felt much better when the season ended than we had been, and we had a lot of confidence and a lot of the processes we put in place, and the level of infrastructure had improved. From a team aspect, we felt that guys took a lot of strides and how important the off-season was going to be.” 

The Marlins front office and the skipper seem to be on the same page, which is a positive sign. When the front office and manager get along, it makes the work much easier. 

The Marlins have a lot of young players and have brought in future stars. A team with a lot of depth and spring training presents a great challenge to see who will give the Marlins the best chance to win in every position, from starting pitchers to relievers to infielders to outfielders.