Miami Marlins at Seattle Mariners: Three Stories To Watch

Can the Miami Marlins Pass On The Kool-Aid? 

From personal experience, probably not if it’s that Blue Raspberry Lemonade flavor.

The tricky part for the Marlins clubhouse is that taking three out of four over the weekend to give you consecutive series wins against a division rival that owned you last year is pretty much the textbook definition of Blue Raspberry Lemonade.

Those four games were nuts. ESPN writers that usually delight in shredding the organization, like David Schoenfield, actually gushed about how great that Mets-Marlins series was. As I teased in the introduction, understating the value here would be impossible. Miami has now won five of their first seven against New York- last year they won seven total. 

On paper, the Mets are a better team. On the field, the Marlins made that look less than obvious, and that was with the team playing at less than full strength. The players should feel good about themselves, should have a certain spring in their step.

But they need to make sure they channel that positively, as opposed to sleepwalking through these next three games that have very little to do with the NL East.

Except of course, for the fact that every game counts. Falling into the trap here in the land of coffee and crab of letting their guard down would essentially wipe away any separation gained over the weekend.

Lastly, even if the Fish do enter this series with best intentions of remaining locked in, one has to consider just how draining the last four games have been for the Marlins.

Really, we can even round up to five here: that Wednesday game against the Braves was decided in the 9th inning as well. Even if it is still early in the season, exhaustion is understandable.

Throw in the fact that yesterday was a holiday, and one on which the team jumped on a plane to cross the entire country, fatigue could play a real factor in this series.