RHYS THOMASON: “A Team That Doesn’t Know What It Wants to Be — and Why That’s OK (For Now)”

 There’s a strange thing happening at Coca-Cola Palms Park this year, and I don’t just mean the teal-tan jerseys, though those remain an ongoing dialogue between fashion and fugitive lighting. I’m talking about the team itself — a club that, if you squint, looks like it should be good, and if you don’t squint, looks like something else entirely depending on the inning, the week, or the mood of the bullpen.

The 2020 Miami Palms are an identity crisis wrapped in an explosion of exit velocity.

Take the offense. On their good days, this might be the most cohesive lineup the organization has fielded in years. The top of the order puts the ball in play; the middle is loud; the bottom has enough professionals to keep an inning alive. Nick Markakis continues to age in reverse, as though the humid Miami air functions as a rejuvenation chamber. The man has become a dependable metronome — steady, unfussy, and oddly indispensable.

But the real story — the one quietly defining the first two months — is the cluster of “middle-tier” players who aren’t acting like middle-tier players. Yairo Muñoz has become a spark plug. Frank Sohn, streaky though he may be, has dragged more rallies back from the grave than anyone expected. And Pat Grant has gone from “raw power” to “power raw enough to be served as sashimi,” with real seasoning starting to show.

So that’s one version of this team: a lineup deeper than its reputation.

Then there’s the other version. The pitching staff remains a Jekyll-and-Hyde case study. On some nights, they look like a workshop of mechanics all fine-tuned by Tony Rico’s guru hands. On others, it’s a walk-a-thon crossed with fireworks. The bullpen in particular seems to suffer from the scheduling gods’ vendetta — they can look like the league’s steadiest unit for three games, then follow with a collective meltdown that has fans eyeing the exits with professional detachment.

Yet here’s the thing: buried in all this inconsistency is something subtler, something almost encouraging. This team is actually building something — and not in the “wait three years and see the prospects bloom” kind of way. No, this is happening in real time, with the players they already have.

If you want to pinpoint one architect of that emergent identity, it might be Forrest Davis, the bench coach who rarely seeks the spotlight but has quietly become the clubhouse’s organizing force. Teammates reference him constantly — not for fiery speeches or quotable moments, but for clarity. Davis has become the guy who translates Hatteberg’s instincts, who bridges the frantic energy of young hitters with the calm of the veterans. He is, in many ways, the culture keeper.

The more you talk to folks around the team, the more they point to Davis as the reason the Palms haven’t spiraled during rough patches. “He just… gets us,” one player said this week, offering the kind of compliment ballplayers don’t hand out lightly.

So where does that leave the Miami Palms? Somewhere between potential and personality, between structure and chaos — and that’s more enticing than it sounds. Great teams don’t always know their identity in April or May. Sometimes they find it by accident, sometimes by force, sometimes by the gentle steering of a bench coach with a knack for human architecture.

This club isn’t polished. It isn’t predictable. But it’s interesting in a way the Palms haven’t been in years.

And that might be the most important trend of all.