Will Miami Marlins care if Jazz Chisholm is bad center fielder? Maybe.

Fans are asking how long a leash the Miami Marlins will give Jazz Chisholm to learn center field, but poor play is the last thing moving him back to second.

The Miami Marlins might have the coolest center fielder in MLB in Jazz Chisholm.

Unfortunately, based on spring returns, the Miami Marlins might also have the worst center fielder in MLB in Jazz Chisholm.

Of course, that statement comes with some huge caveats. For starters, anytime anyone offers you baseball analysis based on spring returns, you should probably take them about as seriously as the Houston Astros would view a showdown against the Savannah Bananas. For another, that worst label only applies to defensive prowess. There are zero questions about his offensive upside. He’s a 30-30 threat if he can play a full season. It’s this little matter of playing a position he had never played professionally in his life prior to this spring that is causing all the uproar.

Which begs the question: exactly how long of a leash will the Miami Marlins give Jazz to learn to play center field?

The most likely answer is … it depends. And what it depends on the most might surprise you, because it certainly isn’t going to be poor play at the position.

That might bear repeating for some of you. The Miami Marlins are not going to be that worried if he looks terrible out there, provided he is still producing at an All-Star level on offense. There is absolutely zero way that they decided to make this move, to give this experiment a shot, without accepting the fact that Chisholm might spend the first couple months of the season being regularly featured on nightly blooper reels.

Offensively gifted center fielders are ridiculously expensive and exceedingly rare. Rarer and pricier still are two-way talents at the position. The reasons for the Marlins doing everything possible to make this work are obvious. It would free up money, and conserve prospect assets, to figure out the center field problem they’ve had these last couple of years on their own. So Chisholm is staying in center. He is the center fielder. He can spend 60 games looking like that one kid who got picked last at kickball, and lost his glasses before having to make a play, out there in the outfield, and Kim Ng and Skip Schumaker will still smile into the camera the next day and tell you how good they feel about Chisholm being their center fielder. This is probably going to be a season-long thing, folks.

What might change that resolution in a hurry though is if this team is good. Like, really good.

If that happens, then the leash gets shortened by half. If the Miami Marlins are playing competitive baseball, holding on to a Wild Card spot, ideally at a time when something happens to hamstring one or more of their NL East rivals, then expect Miami to get very aggressive at upgrading the roster. The most obvious areas to target in that event would be shortstop and center field. Bryan Reynolds has long been linked to the Marlins, and has long been said to want out of Pittsburgh. If he is going to be moved, this is the summer that happens. He’ll likely be the biggest star on the market, at any position. If 2023 Miami looks like 2021 San Francisco, then Pittsburgh is finally going to get the pitching prospect haul they have been demanding.

If the playoffs really look possible, and a deep run at that, then those lovable speed bumps on the road to becoming the next great center fielder are going to get a lot less cute for Miami’s front office.

Additionally, there is another major variable that could impact this situation: health. What if the Marlins are having that really good, competitive season, and there’s a major injury to someone not named Jazz Chisholm? What if either Luis Arraez or Garrett Cooper, Miami’s other 2022 offensive All-Stars, go down? In that case, Chisholm might have to be moved back to second base, even if he does show steady improvement in center.

But if the Marlins are just treading water, hovering around .500? Or worse? It won’t matter how bad the defense is from Chisholm. They’ll stick with him, right until the end. Anything to make this work, because if it does work, Miami saves millions, and look like geniuses in the process.

The only other factor that could move Chisholm out of center field sooner than September would be offensive performance. If he starts to look completely lost at the plate, overwhelmed by the task of learning a new position despite his boasts of being able to handle it? That could cause the Miami Marlins to rethink their brilliance.

Even then though, it all comes down to the record. If Miami is somehow competitive despite a prolonged, Opening Day to Memorial Day sized slump from Chisholm, they probably pull the plug in hopes to get him going. If they are floundering instead, expect him to get six months worth of rope to find himself.

Bottom line, as long as Jazz Chisholm is hitting well, expect the Miami Marlins to stick with their new center fielder as long as possible … no matter how ugly it gets.