Former Cubs top prospect, key member of 2016 team signs with the Marlins

Veteran outfielder Albert Almora Jr. hasn't played in an MLB game since the 2022 season.
ByJake Misener|
Jason Miller/GettyImages

It's already been nine years since Albert Almora Jr. made his MLB debut as a key piece of the 2016 Chicago Cubs. He burst onto the scene and quickly established himself as a premier defender and plus baserunner, but by 2019, the shine had worn off.

His performance quickly deteriorated - going from a 2.2 bWAR peak in 2018 to a cumulative -0.8bWAR from 2019-2020. On the heels of that shortened 2020 season, he was done in Chicago - and he's been looking to re-establish himself as a viable big leaguer ever since.

Almora will get that chance this spring after signing a minor-league deal with the Miami Marlins, a team that seems predestined to lose 100+ games in 2025 - and one that has a murky outfield picture, to say the least. The question really boils down to what the former first-rounder shows he's capable of in camp because the results have been middling in recent years.

After hitting free agency after the 2020 campaign, he landed in Queens, signing a deal with the New York Mets. To call his performance in New York disastrous would be a kindess: he slashed .115/.148/.173 in 54 plate appearances, which equates to a -12 OPS+. His numbers were much more respectable at Triple-A (.270/.331/.428) - and that's been the story for years now.

In his Triple-A career, Almora carries a .290/.332/.419 line in more than 1,200 plate appearances. That level of offensive output, paired with his defensive abilities in the outfield, would be wildly valuable to a big-league club. The problem, though, is his bat-to-ball skills haven't translated on the big stage: he's batted just .219/.265/.344 since the start of the 2019 season, struggling with the Cubs, Mets and Reds during that time.

There were some positives in his last big-league showing in '22 with Cincinnati. He dramatically slashed his strikeout rate to 19.6 percent - a more than 10-point drop over the year prior, while nearly doubling his walk rate. Last year, he spent the year with the Arizona Diamondbacks' Triple-A affiliate, putting up a respectable .292/.349/.439 slash line in nearly 600 trips to the plate.

Like so many other young players on that 2016 World Series team, Almora Jr. seems to have peaked early in his career, only to struggle to recapture that level of production in the years that followed. The last time he put up even a 1.0 bWAR season came back in 2018. But given the lack of clear-cut outfield options with the Marlins, we can hope this homecoming for the Miami-area native helps him turn his career around in 2025.

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