The Marlins have signed outfielder Dustin Fowler to a minor league contract, according to an announcement from their Triple-A affiliate in Jacksonville. The 26-year-old made his first appearance as a Jumbo Shrimp this evening.
Fowler began his career in the Yankees system, emerging as one of the better outfield prospects in the league within a few years. He reached the big leagues as a 22-year-old midway through the 2017 season. Unfortunately, Fowler ruptured his right patellar tendon in a bizarre collision with an exposed electrical box at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field during his MLB debut. That ended his season, and he was traded to the A’s as part of the return for Sonny Gray not long thereafter.
Oakland gave Fowler a bit of run in 2018, but he hit just .224/.256/.354 over 203 plate appearances. He didn’t appear in the majors in either of the next two seasons, instead spending both years on optional assignment — 2019 in Triple-A, 2020 at the alternate training site. Oakland traded him to the Pirates for cash in February.
Fowler opened the year on Pittsburgh’s big league roster but was designated for assignment after a rough eighteen games. The lefty-hitting outfielder cleared outright waivers and only appeared in thirteen Triple-A games before being released last weekend.
Obviously, Fowler hasn’t yet found any success at the big league level. He’s still relatively young and not too far removed from his days as a high-end prospect, though, and there’s no real harm for the Marlins in bringing him aboard as high minors depth. Fowler is a career .294/.342/.508 hitter over parts of four seasons at Triple-A.
Am I the only one who often confuses him with Dexter?
That was my first thought also when I began reading the article. Perhaps he still has a chance to have some success on a big league roster. He must have had some tools in the early going.
I thought thats who they were talking about lol but the age changed me.
Lol there’s no way id get the 2 mixed up. I mean, one is Caucasian and the other is African American, how the hell are you gonna get them confused with each other.
True, however his picture is so small on my dumb smart phone I cannot see him. Just basing my thought on name recognition only.
You arent about to have a good time with Max Muncy of the Oakland A’s, not LA Dodgers. Or Luis Garcia of the Nationals/Astros.
There’s about three Wander Franco’s playing pro ball right now too.
Dustin and Dexter aren’t even close.
Six letter names that start with ‘D’ and have a ‘t’ for the 4th letter? I don’t know how you DON’T get those mixed up.
Yes
Dexter is a slightly better (barely) hitter at this point
Yes you are
His incident as a Yankee was so lame that he’ll always be remembered that way.
The Pirates have been playing infielders in the OF and playing Polanco most of the time and STILL Fowler was released. What does that tell you about him?
He’s typical AAAA – the bigger issue here is Yankees media oversaturation and hype, which they do with literally 100% of their prospects, especially if they are AAAA. I wonder if its pure homerism “this guy is on my team, therefore he is great” or if they realize that the Yankees have 100x the amount of press and writers of any other team, and if a guy is AAAA, they can help propel him into top 100 lists, which makes him a nice piece of dishonest trade bait, much like Fowler was in the Sonny Gray deal – seems like a shady practice to me, maybe MLB should start putting limits on team press numbers, so we can start acting like there’s 30 teams again, instead of just 1.
Aa long as people have a fascination the Yankees….
The Yankees have proven they can’t create any talent of their own. If they’re not paying too dollar for a free agent then they have no talent. They have one of the worst player development departments in the league.
Another perfect example of why we should never EVER trust Yankees prospects – 100% of them are overhyped by the media saturation of that one team.
When you have the most media, you have the most writers, which means the most articles, which leads people on to make them think “oh this guy must be one of the best prospects ever, because this massive amount of homer media says so!” – they never are. Ever. Fowler never had an OPS over .800 for the Yankees farm, he never ever deserved the hype, because he’s a typical AAAA guy and literally always was. But the pro-yankees media hype said otherwise, as it always does…
Fowler and Kaprelian were both injured at the time of the trade. Any problems with that trade is on BB. And if he gets his prospect info from NY media, then it’s definitely on him.
Fowlers ceiling was never much more than an average everyday LF. If OAK thought more of him that would seem to be more of a talent evaluation problem on their part, that and taking him in trade after a season ending knee injury. Mateo was the lottery ticket that hasn’t worked out and Kaprelian is the surer piece of that trade. And Kap seems to be worthy of the trade if he can remain healthy.
Jasson Dominguez will also be a flameout prospect. The yankees couldn’t develop a player to save their lives.
Good luck Dustin Fowler! I hope you are still able to have a good major league career!