Morristown native promoted to Miami Marlins' Minor League Pitching Coordinator

The Miami Marlins are putting a great deal of faith in a former high school baseball coach from Morristown, Indiana.

An out-of-the-blue phone call led to a pitching coach position with the Marlins’ Rookie League team in Jupiter, Florida. Things moved quickly from there for Royce Carlton. He abruptly resigned as Shelbyville High School’s strength and conditioning coach and baseball coach to turn his life upside down. That risk has paid off.

Carlton helped the Marlins have a dominant Rookie League pitching staff then was asked to finish the season as the pitching coach for the organization’s Single-A minor league team in Beloit, Wisconsin.

That success led to a new challenge in 2025 – Latin American pitching coordinator at the Marlins’ baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. What Carlton found in and around Boca Chica were athletically gifted teenagers ready to risk everything to become professional baseball players.

Carlton (photo, with catcher's mitt) will continue his steady rise through the Marlins organization in 2026 as the Minor League Pitching Coordinator.

“I will be everywhere. I will have a really big focus,” said Carlton Thursday morning during a sit-down interview with GIANT fm and the Shelby County Post. He is back home in Indiana enjoying some rare down time in the offseason. “Our larger focus will be our lower levels first. They are kind of a mess right now even though we have a bunch of talent in those levels. Low A didn’t perform very well. High A didn’t perform very well. FCL performed very poorly. Our expectations are to get those levels fixed.

“Our Triple A (Jacksonville) won the Triple-A national championship and Double-A had a very good season. So it all starts at the bottom. We got the DSL academy (in the Dominican Republic) working perfectly. Now, we need to get the stuff in between.”

With the World Series currently preparing for Game 4 in Los Angeles, baseball fans are celebrating the end of the season – the culmination of eight months of work beginning with spring training in March. That’s where Carlton began his professional coaching career in 2024.

“My first year being away from home was pretty tough,” admitted Carlton. “I will say, people don’t realize how crazy and chaotic spring training is. There are zero days off, there are zero days off during the season, but we had zero days off in spring training.”

Carlton was barely settled in when he arrived at the Marlins’ complex in Jupiter.

“I walked in first day and my director at the time, who is now the Triple-A pitching coach for the (Chicago) White Sox, hands me a pitch counter and said welcome to the Marlins … I am going to throw you straight into the fire. I had no idea what to do. It was hectic.”

Carlton’s first season in the Rookie League could not have gone better.

“We had probably one of the best FCL seasons in history. We won the division by a large margin,” he said.

That earned him a trip to Wisconsin.

“I went up to Beloit and had Thomas White (the Marlins’ top prospect) and Noble Meyer (No. 9 prospect), and some really high-end prospects up there which was fun to watch and help.”

The day before Christmas he was asked about going to the Dominican Republic for a role that would challenge his mastery of a second language.

“Coming from Morristown High School where I thought I would never have to use Spanish my entire life … it’s tough,” laughed Carlton. “In the Rookie League two years ago, I was around a lot of Latin American players. I had Spanish classes every day. But being immersed in the Latin American culture to where you have no choice living in Boca Chica, Dominican Republic this past year, you have to learn a few key phrases.”

That experience provided Carlton with a better understanding of the challenges presented to Latin American players living in the United States.

“Originally, they feel very confident when coming (to the United States),” said Carlton. “They don’t realize how harsh the American persona is against them sometimes. Not being fluent in English, they will struggle when they get here just reading signs or ordering food. They are confident at first, but they get hit in the face pretty fast. That’s where us specifically, not only for guys here but other guys coming here stateside, we have to have a great support system for them.”

Carlton is one of those in the Marlins organization that Kevin Defrank relies on. The Marlins’ No. 8 prospect is a six foot, four-inch teenager from the Dominican Republic that has hit 101 miles per hour on a radar gun.

“He is our No. 1 Latin American prospect,” said Carlton. “He just turned 17. He texts me nonstop all day long asking questions. Being a 16- or 17-year-old kid reminds me just how real things are.”

Carlton’s expanding role also has shown him the business side of the sport.

“The best way I can describe it is everybody views professional sports with rose-colored lenses – and it’s not like that whatsoever,” explained Carlton. “There is great stuff about it that gives people enjoyment. In the end, it’s like horse racing. You perform or you get taken out to the pasture. It’s no nonsense. It’s straight to the point. It’s brutal honesty with the players every day. No sugar coating, even if that emotionally hurts them.”

Carlton will have more impact on the Marlins next season with his new role. The organization has stockpiled a large group of athletic young pitchers that Carlton will be overseeing.

“Miami is a very fun organization to be a part of right now,” he said. “The continuity we have with everyone pulling in the right direction is honestly unbelievable. I’ve never witnessed this, even in the movies, how well all of us are working together and pushing forward.

“We have a lot of young talent. The (Los Angeles) Dodgers have a massive bank book. We can’t compete with that, so we have to find different ways against the traditionalist grain … innovative ways to change baseball.”

Less than two years ago, Carlton was working on Arthur Barnett Field to get it ready for Shelbyville High School’s 2024 baseball season. Now, he is prepping the next wave of live arms in the Miami organization to get them ready for Major League Baseball.

“We showed (our work) this past year. Our team outperformed every prediction,” said Carlton of the Marlins, who finished 79-83. “We were a couple of games off of .500. We were supposed to lose 100 games.

“We have control of all our guys for the next two or three years and a lot of guys are waiting in the wings. It’s a very exciting time to be a part of this organization. The Miami fan base is going to be happy the next few years.”

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