What to make of the Miami Marlins recent series winning streak

All of the sudden, the Miami Marlins are winning baseball games. They have notched four consecutive series victories.

It seems as if the story of the Miami Marlins baseball season is the same every year. The team enters with all the promise in the world, appears poised for a run at a wild card berth, and is derailed by one poor month. 2017 has proven to be no different.

The season this year will be defined by the month of May. If writers covering the team had a nickel for every time they had to write “the month of May” this year, they’d be able to pull their resources and buy the team. There is no getting around it though, that’s when the season fell apart.

Now having notched four consecutive series victories, what are we to think of this team?

In many ways, we know as much about the 2017 Miami Marlins as we did before the season started. For all the injuries, performance struggles, and ownership distractions that have taken place, they are exactly who thought they were. A great offense with a terrible pitching staff.

They’ve managed to get solid starting pitching during their recent foray into winning. After taking two-of-three from the Reds and Rangers, they won a four game set against the Reds, and two-of-three against the Nationals. They now find themselves just four games below even.

Are the Miami Marlins finally putting it together? Or will they continue to ebb between scorching hot and freezing cold? Despite several instances of having nearly clawed back to even, they’ve been unable to get there since they were 10-9 on April 26th.

At what point do you start to believe that the Miami Marlins are a viable playoff team this season? How close do they have to get?

When will it not be crazy to believe?

As of Thursday, the Miami Marlins are 9.5 games out of the second wildcard spot. They’ll need to reel off a huge winning streak, and several other teams will need to collapse. Crazy things can happen in baseball, but odds aren’t in the Marlins favor.

They’re running out of time. With precious few weeks of baseball remaining in the season, don’t even look at the standings until they’re within four games. If they can pull that close by the end of August, it lends the hopeful enough reason to hope against reason.

If you’re looking for what to make of this Miami Marlins team, it’s that they’re better than they’ve been given credit for. A punching bag for reporters and team beat writers this season, the Miami Marlins haven’t gotten much respect.

Their ability to put up wins in bunches proves is that they aren’t as far from being a playoff team. Even with a woeful pitching staff, their ability to put up runs in a hurry has kept them hovering near .500.

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The Miami Marlins are already playing for next year. Sale of the team appears to have stalled for now, but Jeffery Loria won’t own the team by next season. If they can put on a strong show to end the year, it might enough to convince incoming ownership to keep them together.