Since emerging from Philadelphia tied for first place, the Miami Marlins have struggled, losing 11 of their last 13 games. The Marlins struggles have been characterized by an overall poor display of hitting. A revolving door at the bottom of the order has not yielded effective results. Throughout the teams hot month of May, Giancarlo Stanton primarily carried the offensive load while the bottom of the order struggled. It was not reasonable to expect Stanton to carry the team the entire season. As such, throughout the last 15 games Stanton has hit .176 with an uncharacteristic one home run. The five through eight holes in the order continue to struggle, thus exposing an unexpected inefficiency within the Marlins offense. Miami is at the bottom of the National League in hitting with runners in scoring position, thus like last year puts excess pressure on the rotation of which is not expected to be flawless all season.
Despite these offensive woes, Miami remains at the moment a game under. 500 only three games out of the second Wild Card spot. While there is no doubt that adjustments and vast improvement must be made on the part of the offense, it appears that the overall performance at the plate cannot get any worse. Despite losing Emilio Bonifacio for significant time and despite the struggles from the bottom of the order, the Marlins remain a playoff contender.
Everything that could go wrong essentially has over the course of the past two weeks, yet the Marlins remain only two games out. As evidenced by the teams previous hot streak in which Stanton led the way, only one player needs to get hot to carry the team. While this is not optimal and we would like to see the order from top to bottom make more consistent contact, it remains that Miami is only 3 games out of the Wild Card and one simple spark is all that is needed to start a climb back to the top of the standings. As such despite this debilitating June Swoon, Miami remains within striking distance of the National League Wild Card.