CHICAGO – Marlins third baseman Connor Norby hasn’t felt right since Spring Training. He worked on flattening his bat path and correcting his rotation. He tried figuring out whatever it was that needed tinkering at the plate.
Over the past week, the hitting staff and assistant general manager Gabe Kapler spoke with Norby about having time for pregame work, but then going out there and not worrying about it.
At the end of the day, it comes down to something rather simple:
"Hit strikes hard,” hitting coach Pedro Guerrero said of the club’s hitting philosophy. “That's our pillar. You see a strike, go, take your swing at it and hit it hard.”
Norby did just that with a homer and a triple, but Jesus Tinoco surrendered three runs in the ninth inning of Tuesday night’s 5-4 walk-off loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
“Throughout the last week, my process has been really good, but the biggest thing and biggest emphasis they've had with me is just swinging at good pitches,” Norby said. “When I swing at good pitches, I do good things. When I don't swing at good pitches, I don't do good things.
“It's pretty self-explanatory, but for me, it helps dumb it down, because I can overthink a lot of times. And I think that's just something that has been helping me kind of find my footing and continue to start putting better at-bats together and more consistent at-bats. It’s just something simple like that.”
In a 1-1 ballgame, Norby led off the fifth with his first career triple, sending a pitch in the upper-right quadrant to the right-field corner. He went first to third in 12.06 seconds (90th percentile) and would come around to score on Javier Sanoja’s RBI groundout two batters later, giving Miami a 2-1 lead.
With the score tied at 2 in the seventh, Norby deposited right-hander Julian Merryweather’s four-seamer in the upper-left quadrant well over the left-field wall for a leadoff homer in the seventh. It had a projected distance of 400 feet, with an exit velocity of 104.5 mph.
Both of Norby’s home runs this season have gone to the pull side. During his rookie season in 2024, just four of his nine long balls did. After coming over with Kyle Stowers in the Trevor Rogers trade ahead of last year’s Deadline, Norby proved he could go deep to the right-center gap at loanDepot park, no easy feat for a right-handed hitter.
“If anything, I'm trying to get back the other way more,” Norby said. “I'm not trying to pull the ball really at all. I'm happier with the triple than I am the homer, to be honest, just because I've been trying to get on top of fastballs and get back the other way, and that was one of my better swings of the year, for sure.”
With Tuesday’s performance, Norby extended his team-leading hitting streak to eight games. During this stretch, he is batting .357 (10-for-28) with two doubles, one triple, one homer, three RBIs, two walks and six strikeouts. After missing the first 17 games of the season with a left oblique strain, Norby has hit safely in 15 of 22 games since his return from the injured list.
This is what the Marlins envisioned from Norby in 2025. After all, promotional material featured Norby, ace Sandy Alcantara and shortstop Xavier Edwards.
And it made sense.
Following his brief Minor League stint to learn third base with his new organization, Norby began his Marlins tenure with a 10-game hitting streak, becoming the third player in franchise history to do so. That stretch was the longest by a Marlins rookie in 11 years (Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich). His 29 runs scored in his first 36 games marked the second most in club history, trailing Hanley Ramírez (34 runs).
When the Marlins reinstated Norby from the IL on April 20, manager Clayton McCullough called him a big part of the lineup and someone who brings an edge to the club. That version of Norby has been showing up more consistently of late.
“His ability to come in there and lengthen out the lineup, there's some impact there with his ability to get extra-base hits and someone we were certainly counting on coming out of spring,” McCullough said. “It's nice to have him back in there, and he can just kind of continue to take days like this and build on those, because he's certainly a key contributor for us now moving forward.”