When Do We Take the Marlins Seriously in the Wild Card Race?

We’re in the first full week of August, and a team that entered this year with an o/u win total of 62.5 on BetMGM is sitting just two games under .500 and seven games back of the final Wild Card spot in the National League.

YOUR Miami Marlins are currently 55-57 under first-year manager Clayton McCullough and are not showing any signs of slowing down. Since the calendar turned over to June, they rank second in the National League in wins, and they won six series in a row before dropping their first two against the Astros this week.

The highlight of their hot streak? They kicked off August by sweeping the Yankees over the weekend.

At one point earlier this season, around the same time they were swept at home at the hands of the Colorado Rockies, the Marlins sat 16 games below .500. It looked as if they would continue to jettison players off their roster in their continued rebuild/revamp efforts.

Yet, here we sit, a week after the trade deadline, and the Marlins only made two trades. They dealt away left-handed hitting outfielder Jesús Sanchez and catcher Nick Fortes. This came to the surprise of many after they were consistently mentioned in trade rumors surrounding right-handed starters Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera.

Now that we are in the final two months of the MLB regular season, this raises the question: Can the Marlins actually back their way in to the final National League Wild Card spot?

How Are the Marlins Doing This?

The Marlins are well-known for trading away any player with value once he starts to reach the point in time at which he begins to cost more money.

We’re coming off a calendar year in which the sold players like Luis Arraez, Tanner Scott, Jesús Luzardo, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. He was ridiculed at the time for all of these moves but, Peter Bendix looks to have made the right decision in doing so because it was these moves that built the core that has propelled the Marlins into the position they’re in now.

The offensive side of that game has been all but simple for Miami. From top to bottom, the lineup as a whole has contributed with timely hitting since the very beginning.

As always, it starts at the top. Xavier Edwards has continued to build on the success he’s had dating back to 2024. It became more prominent once he moved off of shortstop to his natural position of second base. Among qualified hitters on the Marlins roster, he ranks second in terms of wRC+ (102) and has accumulated 1.8 fWAR across 96 games played this year.

You then have a trio of hitters who have done nothing but produce whenever they have been in the lineup. First of all, Otto Lopez continues to be one of the most disrespected players in all of baseball and needs to be mentioned more amongst the best defenders at the shortstop position in all of baseball. The glove is THAT good.

It’s not just his defense, though. On the offensive side of the ball, he is striking out only 14% of the time, walking just under 9% of the time, and his 92 wRC+ is perfectly respectable for such a terrific defender. Considering he has been DFA’d twice in his career, I’d say Lopez was another incredible find by Bendix.

I will join the next two hitters together because they both seem to be in the middle of every Marlins win. The duo of All-Star Kyle Stowers and NL Rookie of the Year candidate Agustín Ramírez needs to be talked about more when you discuss the game’s best middle-of-the-order duos.

Stowers, who should be discussed when talking about NL MVP candidates, has a 4.0 fWAR to go along with his 155 wRC+ and his .937 OPS. He took this offseason to fix up the deficiencies in his game and has now become a staple in the young core down in Miami.

Ramírez, acquired via the Yankees in the Chisholm trade around last year’s deadline, has demonstrated a far more advanced approach at the plate than anyone could have envisioned.

The defense does leave something to be desired, but the improvements have been there, and it is something the Marlins can stomach if he is going to continue to win games on his own, as he did in Saturday’s 2-0 victory against the Yankees on the back of his two solo home runs.

Per BetMGM, he currently sits fifth in NL Rookie of the Year odds, but has arguably been the best rookie of the class.

Aside from those four, the Marlins have just executed to perfection with players like Griffin Conine (pre-injury), Dane Myers, Heriberto Hernández, Rule 5 selection Liam Hicks, super utility guy Javier Sanoja, and even more recently with the lightning bolt debut of Jakob Marsee. This lineup is clicking on all cylinders as we enter crunch time.

The pitching is where it gets fun, and could likely be the main reason why the Marlins have been commonly referred to as the 2014 Detroit Tigers of this season. It has been accomplished by pure chaos.

The chaos started with a surprising start to the season for a former unanimous Cy Young Award winner, Sandy Alcantara. Even coming off Tommy John surgery, I don’t think anyone would have expected the slow start he got off to.

Lucky for Heriberto Hernández and the organization, he has perhaps started to look more like the Sandy of old. In his last three starts prior to his blow-up outing on Monday, he pitched to a 2.00 ERA across 18 innings and started to generate groundballs at the same high mark that led to his success back in 2023.

Also coming off of TJ was young phenom, Eury Pérez. After an electric start to his MLB career, he was unfortunately shelved due to his elbow injury, but he does not seem to have skipped a beat. He is arguably even more dominant now than he was before the surgery.

Aside from those two, the Marlins have had to deal with injuries to Ryan Weathers, Max Meyer, and Braxton Garrett, who were all projected to be in their starting rotation coming into the season. Cal Quantril has continued to do Cal Quantril things and has been just what the Marlins have needed him to be: an innings eater who can consistently go out there and keep his team in games.

Another incredible find by Bendix was someone who signed a minor league deal right before spring training started and who stepped up big time for the team when their starters went down.

As I highlighted in a previous article, Janson Junk has revamped his pitching mechanics to become the more effective and efficient version of himself that has been going out and throwing every fifth day.

Now, you did not think I could have possibly forgotten about the unsung hero for this rotation, right? Edward Cabrera has been nothing short of dominant for the Fish.

Entering his fifth MLB season, Cabrera is having the best year of his career by far. It has been stated frequently in our articles and on the Just Baseball podcast how his success can be attributed to Cabrera finally buying into what the organization is doing, and I am sure a lot of it also has to do with the revamping of the pitching development team as a whole.

His 3.24 ERA might not scream dominance, but what he is doing on the mound says otherwise. In his most recent start, Trent Grisham led off the game with a 400-plus-foot home run. The Cabrera of old might have just fallen into the “Oh, it’s just going to be one of those starts” mentality and would have been lost for the game.

Instead, it was the total opposite.

He proceeded to shut down the Yankees for five innings, striking out seven, en route to solidifying the sweep for the Marlins.

Cabrera is doing all of this by executing his pitches in every situation and limiting walks at a career-low 8.2% rate. He seems to have almost scrapped the four-seamer and is sticking mainly to a four-pitch arsenal, playing off of his dancing sinker/change combination that continues to make waves on Pitching Ninja every fifth day.

Then you have the team’s bullpen led by another waiver claim who has solidified himself as one of the better late-inning arms in all of baseball, in Ronny Henriquez.

Did you miss what the pitching chaos was like in Detroit? Well, lucky for you, there’s still a chance to re-live it through the 2025 Miami Marlins bullpen. For a team that does not rank above 15th on just about any bullpen leaderboard in all of baseball, they might have personified what it is to be “clutch” with their performance this year.

Aside from Henriquez, a conglomerate of arms, like Lake Bachar, Anthony Bender, Cade Gibson, and Calvin Faucher, have all stepped up in big moments to pitch the Fish out of jams this season.

A total of 18 different arms have jogged out from the outfield walls to make an appearance for the Miami Marlins this year, which ranks among the top teams in the league. And that’s not to mention the 12 that have made a start.

If this extensive breakdown can be summed up into one idea, it is that in-game management is a vastly underrated trait for a coaching staff in today’s game. The ability to make the right call in these situations, in order to extract every ounce of success possible from a roster no one expected anything out of, is why Clayton McCullough deserves far more recognition for NL Manager of the Year.

Can They Do It?

Whether you buy into this or not, the Marlins have the 21st-easiest strength of schedule remaining this season. It’s 11th if you just include the National League.

Of those teams around them, and of those vying for one of the three Wild Card spots, the Giants, Cubs, and Padres all have easier schedules remaining throughout the year. It will be tough for the Marlins to try to make up their seven-game deficit behind the Padres, but we have definitely seen crazier things happen (yes, I am referencing the 2014 Gritty Tigs again).

As someone who has been asking for fans to give Bendix time to mold this organization into his own after taking over for Kim Ng, I will never not believe in the Fish. Up to this point, they have done nothing but prove me right in that they are building towards something.

Even if it is not in 2025, a big reason as to why I wrote about how the Marlins shouldn’t sell at this year’s deadline is that I am confident that the momentum that has started this year is going to carry over and have us all talking about the Marlins in the postseason very soon.

So, is it now time to buy into the Miami Marlins? Do you regret not buying that stock before it blew up?

Think about it.