This Miami Marlins season is about development, as president of baseball operations Peter Bendix referenced multiple times in his new interview with MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola. Hamstrung by the lowest player payroll in Major League Baseball entering 2025, Bendix was quiet last winter coming off an 100-loss campaign. The Marlins’ belief in their internal options was genuine, but they did not feign interest in chasing victories. Their Opening Day roster was the youngest in the league, rife with players who hadn’t experienced a full-length MLB season before.
Throughout much of the first half, the Marlins’ results were unsurprisingly awful. They made it deep into June without having swept a single series. They briefly owned the National League’s second-worst record, leading only the historically inept Colorado Rockies. Even the most optimistic Marlins fans were counting down the days until the MLB trade deadline when veterans could be flipped to better position themselves to be competitive in 2026.
Then came an exhilarating road trip and a win streak with no precedent in the franchise’s history.
Miami’s overall body of work is still mediocre, but the same could have been said of last year’s Detroit Tigers just past the midpoint of the regular season schedule. Through the first 82 games of their respective seasons:
2024 Tigers: 37-45 record, minus-22 run differential, 8.0 games back of final AL wild-card spot
2025 Marlins: 37-45 record, minus-74 run differential, 8.5 games back of final NL wild-card spot
FanGraphs had almost given up on the Tigers. Multiple times in early August, their estimated playoff odds bottomed out at 0.2%. The demise of the Marlins looked even more definitive. They spent most of June with 0.0% playoff odds.
Detroit leadership determined that they didn’t have sufficient offensive firepower to pursue an October berth. The Tigers entered the trade deadline with the 23rd-ranked wRC+ in MLB. They made four deals that week, shipping off Jack Flaherty, Andrew Chafin, Mark Canha and Carson Kelly. None of the seven players they received in return had big league experience.
Over the next month, Bendix and Co. will likely come to the same sobering conclusion about their ballclub and behave accordingly, except they’ll point to pitching as the issue. Entering Monday, the Fish have a 4.37 FIP which ranks—you guessed it—23rd in MLB. The staff’s strike-throwing has gradually improved, but it is still hard to imagine a fiery finish to the season given their lack of swing-and-miss. Moving prospects for immediate reinforcements on that front would be irresponsible. On the contrary, it’s been widely reported that the Marlins are open to discussing trades involving longtime ace Sandy Alcantara and former top prospect Edward Cabrera.
Handicapped by their own front office, how did the 2024 Tigers rally to 86-76, make it into the postseason, upset the Houston Astros in the first round and come within a game of reaching the ALCS?
Well, it helped to have one of the best pitchers on the planet, Tarik Skubal. The eventual AL Cy Young award winner was elite and durable from the team’s 83rd game onward (2.46 ERA and 2.28 FIP in 95.0 IP). Once the Tigers punched their ticket to October, Skubal led them to shutout victories in each of his first two career playoff starts. Tyler Holton was also indispensable during that same stretch (0.68 ERA and 2.44 FIP in 52.2 IP), contributing as both an opener and high-leverage reliever.
The Tigers offense ticked up, but only marginally. Parker Meadows established himself as their everyday center fielder, combining plus defense with a .299/.344/.513 slash line over his final 50 games of the season. Colt Keith had Detroit’s second-highest second-half fWAR on the position player side, shaking off an atrocious beginning to his MLB career.
Based on current FanGraphs projections, 86 wins could be Miami’s magic number, too.
Shocking the world starts with holding onto Alcantara through season’s end. Even if the quality of his pitching continues to pale in comparison to his pre-surgery norms, it’s critical that he eats enough innings to keep the bullpen fresh. The boost in quality would have to come largely from Ryan Weathers—eligible to return from a lat strain in mid-August—and Eury Pérez, who was recently reincorporated into the rotation.
A deep lineup deserves most of the credit for the Marlins’ seven-game win streak and their significant improvement from last season, but let’s not lazily assume that their hitters will continue to overachieve to this degree. The club’s .307 batting average on balls in play is second-highest in the big leagues. The Fish have clustered their hits effectively, performing way better with runners in scoring position than they do with the bases empty. Regression could be coming.
Frankly, I do not see a winning record being attainable, much less a Tigers-like surge to 10 games over .500. However, the similarities between the teams at this particular juncture of their seasons are interesting, nonetheless.