Miami Marlins: The franchise all-time bracket

The Miami Marlins have only had two truly strong teams, and both won the World Series. Which will prove to have been the franchise’s best?

Since the creation of the Marlins in 1993, the franchise has lived a curious, often difficult existence.

No Miami Marlins team has ever won a division title, yet the Marlins have two World Series trophies. Both came as wild cards, in 1997 and again in 2003.

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They are also the only two Marlins teams to have played a post-season game. In fact, only six Marlins teams in history have finished the regular season with better than .500 records, so our eight-team bracket will include two sub-.500 teams.

Begin with the two champions, the 1997 and 2003 clubs. To them, the obvious decision is to add the four teams that won more games than they lost. Those would be the teams of 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2009.

Of the other Marlins teams, those that came closest to .500 were the 1996 and 2010 teams, both of which were 80-82. But there is also an irresistible quality to the 2017 Marlins. True, that team only finished 77-85, but it featured (and subsequently traded away) a darned good outfield: Giancarlo Stanton, Marcel Ozuna, and Christian Yelich, all of them at or approaching their primes.

Given the mediocre nature of the 2010 club, it seems a reasonable thing to drop it in favor of 2017.

The format is largely identical to previous bracket challenges, but there is one adaptation made in deference to the franchise’s youth. In fact, none of the eight teams in this bracket has produced a Hall of Famer, so in cases when a Game 7 is required we are substituting All-Star selections.

Otherwise, each matchup in the tournament is decided based on seven criteria. You can think of each as a ‘game,’ the winner of four games advancing. The seven criteria are:

1. Game 1: Regular season winning percentage.
2. Game 2: Post-season winning percentage
3. Game 3: Team OPS+
4. Game 4: Team ERA+
5. Game 5 (if necessary): Team WAR
6. Game 6 (if necessary: Fielding percentage above the league average for the season in question.
7. Game 7 (if necessary): The standard for Game 7 is Hall of Famers or likely future Hall of Famers.