30 Teams In 30 Days: The Marlins Made The Postseason Last Year, And Proceeded To Do Shit This Offseason

I really do want to root for this team, but they just can't seem to get out of their own way. The Miami Marlins are a baseball anomaly. They've had two wildly successful seasons and have two world championships to show for it. They made the playoffs in the Covid in 2020 and last year as well, but besides that, they have no other playoff appearances throughout their team's history, and not only have they consistently missed the playoffs, it's been very rare that they've found any sort of long-term success for the Marlins. There's never been some three-year window where they were really competitive—last year seemed like it could've been the beginning of something. It was an 84-win season under first-year manager Skip Schumacher. They had a batting champion in Luiz Arraez, and the pitching staff was pretty darn good. They proceeded to do nothing this offseason.

They added Tim Anderson, who was awful a season ago. I still do like this rotation and think they'll be able to keep them in games, but with the loss of Sandy Alcantara, you're losing your biggest innings eater. As good as I think Braxton Garrett and Jesus Luzardo can be, there's not a long history of them pitching really well deep into a season. I won't claim to be an expert on this stuff, but shouldn't Miami be a big market? There's no organization in sports that just kind of exists the way that the Miami Marlins do, and yes, it infuriates me that they have two world championships in my lifetime, and the Tigers have zero. It would be great if we looked back at last year as the beginning of something for Miami, but there are too many holes in that office for me to really get excited about them. It doesn't help that they also play in a really competitive division. They'll be by no means awful, but I have a hard time believing they'll be super competitive.