This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola¡¯s Marlins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Marlins opened the 2025 international signing period on Wednesday by inking 17 players, including MLB Pipeline Top 50 prospects Andrew Salas (No. 5 overall) and Kevin Defrank (No. 40).

Here are some of the highlights from Marlins director of international scouting David Hernandez Beayne¡¯s Zoom with local media:

How was the strategy different from previous years?
¡°When Adrian Lorenzo first took over this department a couple years back, we had just added a second [Dominican Summer League] team, and so that was one where we had to get very aggressive with filling. Obviously we had a really good system in place, really good process to identify and evaluate players, and so we had to be very aggressive to fill up an entire roster of at least 35 active players. In past years, we understood that we needed to be more aggressive, identifying that talent and getting into a position where we would need to fill the team.

¡°As the years have progressed, with more players sticking in the system and others progressing to the States, there hasn't been as aggressive [of a] need to add more talent to fill those positions. This year I think was more strategic in diversifying our portfolio, in terms of getting Andrew, obviously, the crown jewel and the best player in our class, and adding [as many] pieces with what we had remaining to kind of fill out the rest of the class. It is a lot smaller than what we're traditionally used to. But again, we're very happy with the class that we have, and we still have money available. If there are players that pop up like they normally do later on in the period, we'll be as aggressive as need be.¡±

Who are some of the under-the-radar signees?

RHP Adri¨¢n Pe?a (Dominican Republic)
¡°A guy who just has elite size [6-foot-7], still very projectable, very athletic and coordinated, and has already been up to 94 mph for us, with an absolute plus breaking ball that he spins up to 27-2800 [rpm]. Just in terms of understanding his development timeline, his age and where he needs to get to, we think that he has one of the highest upsides of any player in this class, because of his elite size, because of his projectability, because of his athleticism and his pitch package overall. It might take some time, because it's always difficult for those bigger guys to be able to coordinate their bodies and get that functional strength needed to be able to repeat consistently. But we feel very excited about his potential and what he can become.¡±

SS Steven Herrera (Dominican Republic)
¡°He's a guy whose arrow has been trending up as well. He's a very dynamic, wiry-type athlete that is able to play multiple positions. We don't know if he's going to be able to stick with shortstop. We do know that he's going to be able to play all over the field. He's a dynamic, explosive player on all the tests that we did. Amongst all our players, he's No. 1 in raw explosiveness, bat speed, power. There is a little bit of length to his swing. There's some recognition things that we've been working on as well. But if it all clicks for him, he's one of the guys that we picked internally as our dark horse to be somebody that can become impactful, just because of how explosive and how athletic he actually is, and his ability to play a premium position as well.¡±

Will the Marlins explore other international markets?
¡°I was just in the Bahamas this past week looking at available players. We've been heavily scouting in some other markets as well: Cura?ao, Aruba. There's been a stronger emphasis now on Brazil as well, because of the pact that they have with MLB. We recently hired a new scouting coordinator that's going to oversee Colombia and Panama, a country that we haven't had that much presence in for some time, and we've been doing our research to get more involved with Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I think for the future, our plans are going to be to cast a really wide net, trying to identify as much talent as possible to see what makes most sense for the Marlins as a whole.

¡°I can tell you that recently, we have been exploring other markets to see if there is any talent that we would want to add going forward, and I think that we've positioned ourselves strongly understanding what our process is to feel secure about reaching an agreement with a player to continue with that. But overall, we have been looking. It is our plan to add more players, for sure. We always keep our options open.¡±