Miami Marlins Need To Improve Against NL East

Entering play today, the Miami Marlins sit at a promising 20-17 on the year.

And as pointed out in this morning’s Fish Flash, pretty sure I’m obligated to remind you that the Miami Marlins will be hosting the 2017 All-Star Game at this point.

Seriously, will bet you a crisp high five a Marlins broadcaster makes that connection during tonight’s broadcast.  But I digress, least until I am plucked from the amateur writing ranks and am contractually bound to make such shameless plugs.

About that 20-17 record though.  In the process of earning that, the Marlins have pounded the majority of baseball to the tune of a 12-6 mark.  They’ve decimated the NL West, which will like produce at least two contenders for a 2016 Wild Card slot, and have categorically proven that they are better than the Milwaukee Brewers, as the Brew Crew accounts for every game of the club’s 4-2 tally against the NL Central.

And then there’s the NL East.

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The Fish are 8-11 against their division foes, with 57 games remaining.  So while this won’t figure to be the world’s most mathematically shocking bit of baseball analysis, it does seem worth bringing up nonetheless.  Especially as we are closing in on the quarter pole of the season, while simultaneously finding the Marlins facing the prospect of having 9 of their next 13 opponents hailing from within the division.

This is nothing new, of course.  You’d have to go back to 2011 for the last time the team even managed to not post a losing record against at least two NL East clubs, and 2010 to find the last Marlins team that pulled off the task of having a winning record within the division.  All-time, Miami has a winning record against only the Nationals, routinely dominated by the Braves (.418 %) and Phillies (.449%) and typically edged out by the Mets (.480 %).

This can also, of course, be dismissed as irrelevant.  We are after all the franchise that has never won its division, yet has managed to win two world championships.  In fact, that 1997 squad was only able to eke out a 25-23 record against the East.

But I think we can all agree that the 2003 club that went 48-28 in division play is the approach that should be emulated.  Which brings us back the 2016 model, that woeful 8-11 mark, and how the next two weeks will go a long way towards predicting what kind of season fans can expect.

One positive to be drawn from that tally is that the Marlins are actually 7-6 against the teams that are supposed to be good this season, with nary a losing record against either the Nats or the Mets.  But 1-5 against the Braves and Phillies can’t continue, and Nationals fans will gleefully point out that they weren’t playing at full strength those last two games.

Considering that there are only five division games on tap for the entire month of June, and none against the Nationals after this week until September, how May plays out could have a lot to say on how the East race shakes out.  Winning teams beat the teams they should beat, and even if the time has come to reassess what to expect from the 2016 Phillies, there’s no scenario where the Marlins have the season they want to have if they can’t find some traction in their division.