MINNEAPOLIS — The Miami Marlins (20-23) and Minnesota Twins (19-24) play the rubber game of a three-game interleague series at Target Field on Thursday at 1:40 p.m. ET. Braxton Garrett starts for Miami against Zebby Matthews. The series is tied 1-1 after Minnesota’s 3-0 shutout Tuesday and Miami’s 9-5 win Wednesday. The story of who is pitching Thursday is the story of how fast the Marlins’ season can change.
Eight days ago, the Marlins were a parade of pitching prospects. Now they are a team reaching back for the one they drafted nine years ago.
The Snelling Injury Changes The Plan
Robby Snelling — the No. 26 prospect in baseball, the headliner of the Marlins’ eight-day prospect wave, the left-hander who made his MLB debut last Friday — was placed on the 15-day injured list this week with a left UCL sprain. The diagnosis came after exactly one Major League start. The UCL is the ligament Tommy John surgery repairs, and a sprain is the warning that precedes it. Snelling will be evaluated over the coming days. The Marlins have not put a timeline on his return, and “an extended period” is the phrase being used around the team.
The corresponding moves: right-hander Pete Fairbanks was activated, and left-hander Braxton Garrett was recalled from Triple-A Jacksonville to take the open rotation spot.
Thursday: Braxton Garrett’s First Marlins Start Since June 2024
Braxton Garrett is not a prospect. He is the prospect the Marlins drafted before all the others — the seventh overall pick in the 2016 draft, out of Florence High School in Alabama, the original arm of the franchise’s long left-handed pipeline. He is 28 years old now. He has 326.1 Major League innings and a career 4.03 ERA. His 2023 season — 159.2 innings, 3.66 ERA, 9-7 — is the version of Garrett the Marlins are hoping shows up Thursday. His 2024 was wrecked by injury and ended at 37 innings with a 5.35 ERA. He has not started a Major League game since June 2024.
The Triple-A line in 2026 is encouraging and incomplete: six starts, a 2.30 ERA, 32 strikeouts in 31.1 innings. The walk rate (15 in those innings) is the part Miami will watch. Garrett’s command was the foundation of his 2023 breakout — a 1.6 BB/9 that year — and the walks in Jacksonville suggest the command is still finding its level. Thursday is a real start for a real rotation spot, not a rehab outing.
This is a 2025 photo of Braxton Garrett the Miami Marlins baseball team. This image reflects the Marlins active roster as of Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, when this image was taken. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
The Other Guy: Zebby Matthews
Zebby Matthews is a 26-year-old right-hander who has not yet recorded a Major League decision in 2026. His 2025 line was a 5.56 ERA across 79.1 innings, and his last seven starts of that season produced a 6.11 ERA. He has never faced the Marlins as a starter. Like Garrett, Matthews is a pitcher his team is hoping can hold a rotation spot rather than one it is counting on — the Twins are working through their own rotation questions in a season that has them 19-24.
What Wednesday Showed
Miami’s 9-5 win Wednesday was the offense doing what it has done all season. Owen Caissie — the Canadian outfielder acquired in the Edward Cabrera trade — hit a two-run home run. Leo Jiménez, getting the regular at-bats manager Clayton McCullough promised him, had three hits. Xavier Edwards had a double and a triple. Liam Hicks drove in three. Max Meyer survived a two-homer afternoon from Byron Buxton to improve to 3-0, and Simeon Woods Richardson fell to 0-6. The Marlins have scored nine, eight, and five runs in three of their last four games. The bats are not the question. The rotation, suddenly, is.
What The Market Says
FanDuel opened Thursday’s rubber game close to a coin flip. The Twins are slight home favorites at -126 on the moneyline; the Marlins are +108. The run line has Minnesota at -1.5 (+152) and Miami at +1.5 (-184). The total is set at 8.5, with the over at -118.
What the number is really saying: the books cannot price two starting pitchers nobody can project. Braxton Garrett has not started a Major League game in eleven months. Zebby Matthews has not recorded a Major League decision in 2026 and carried a 5.56 ERA through 2025. Neither team’s offense is being treated as the deciding factor, and neither pitcher is being treated as trustworthy enough to move the line hard in either direction. A -126 home favorite with the road team at +108 is, in sportsbook terms, a shrug — two sub-.450 clubs, two question-mark arms, pick a side. The first-five-innings market tells the same story: Marlins +142, Twins +102, with a tie paying +490, because nobody is confident either starter gets through five cleanly.
How To Watch
- Thursday May 14 · 1:40 PM ET · Target Field, Minneapolis
- Pitching: Braxton Garrett (MIA) vs. Zebby Matthews (MIN)
- Streaming: MLB.TV · Underdog MLB
- Radio: WQAM 104.3 · WAQI 710 AM (Spanish) · TIBN / WCCO 830 (Minnesota)
The Closing Note
The Marlins came into this homestand telling a story about a pipeline arriving — Mack, Ekness, Fulton, Snelling, all inside eight days. Thursday tells the other half of that story. Pipelines are fragile. Young arms get hurt. Snelling’s UCL sprain after one start is the reminder that the parade can stop as fast as it started. The answer Miami reached for is not another prospect. It is Braxton Garrett — 28 years old, drafted in 2016, the first arm the franchise ever bet on in this rebuild. He takes the ball at 1:40 in a tied series. The bats will be there. The question is the one the Marlins did not expect to be asking this week.
— MT
