5 Marlins who have best chance to represent Miami in Baseball Hall of Fame

Another year of voting, another year where the Miami Marlins won't have a player representing them in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

That's the unfortunate result of last Tuesday's inexplicable news that Gary Sheffield was found to be unworthy of Cooperstown in his final year on the ballot. The voters failed Sheffield, Marlins fans, and any baseball fan who ever found themselves holding anything resembling a stick and imitating his incomparable batting stance. While it wasn't exactly written in stone (bronze?) that Sheffield would have worn a Marlins cap if selected, Miami will remain without a Hall of Famer to call their very own.

Of course, the Miami Marlins aren't alone in that respect. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays are also without a Hall of Famer. And if you started following baseball in 2005, then the Washington Nationals don't have one, either (multiple Expos are in the Hall). Some of this is due to the still relatively young age of the franchise. Sheffield's candidacy is a perfect demonstration of that reality: a player that was with the team in their inaugural season (1993) was still eligible to be voted for today in 2024. Most of it is due to a mess of their own making. Decades of penury and rebuilds have robbed Miami of having all that many shots at even getting Hall of Fame talent on the roster to begin with, let alone having Hall of Fame talent long enough to make them consider picking a teal cap when they get the call.

Currently, only five players enshrined in Cooperstown have even played a game for Miami. Of those five, only Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez did so in anything close to the prime of their career. Piazza was in Miami for a week before being traded; Rodriguez helped the team win their second championship. Prior to that, Andre Dawson and Tim Raines (two of your three Expos/Nationals) were also there, but on the very last legs of their storied careers. Trevor Hoffman began his career in Miami, only to be traded for...Sheffield himself. Obviously, Jim Leyland won a World Series with the Marlins in 1997 as their manager, and will join Tony Perez as the second enshrinee to have managed Miami. Not a Marlins cap among them, though, and that situation won't change when the greatest Marlins player ever- Miguel Cabrera- makes it in on the first ballot four years from now. At this point, he's as Detroit as Barry Sanders and Ty Cobb.

All of which begs the question, just who will be the first Baseball Hall of Famer to represent the Miami Marlins? Will it ever happen? And if so, when?

Now, the most likely answer to this question is some player that no one has ever heard of, or at the very least one that won't even play in the majors until 2027 at the earliest. However, that's not much fun, is it? Not to mention of very little comfort to Marlins fans mourning Sheffield's failed bid.

So what follows here will be a rundown of the five most likely players you have heard of, that have already played many games in a Miami Marlins uniform, that could one day go on to represent the Magic City in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Starting with...