Miami Marlins: 2003 or 2008, two ways season can play out
Miami Marlins history shows two ways the 2020 campaign could play out for the team.
The Miami Marlins were never expected to contend heading into the 2020 MLB season.
That’s not exactly breaking news. What has struck me by surprise is just how often the 2003 Miami Marlins have come up this long, long offseason. That’s probably partly the fault of last year’s world champion. The 2019 Washington Nationals, just like Miami in ’03, stumbled mightily out of the gates before beginning their title run.
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The moral of these stories is that teams won’t have that luxury in 2020. Sixty games is a blink of an eye in sports’ longest season, and the teams that play in October will most likely be the ones that stayed hot wire to wire. There’s arguably a better chance of a team starting fast and sleepwalking through September making the playoffs than the opposite.
The fact that the 2003 Miami Marlins would not have made the playoffs in a sixty game season is a valid one. But it got me to thinking about other Marlins teams that might have actually had a real shot at reaching the Fall Classic under such conditions. To my mind, the 2008 Miami Marlins are the best candidate.
So which club, 2003 or 2008, is the best model for how the 2020 season will play out for the Marlins? Let’s take a look.
How 2020 Miami Marlins could play out like the 2003 Florida Marlins.
All Miami Marlins fans know the story. Most baseball fans do, thanks to a certain Cubs fan. After a 16-22 start to the season, Jeff Torborg was fired and the aged Jack McKeon was brought in to manage the eventual 2003 World Champions.
As terrible as that first half started for the 2003 Miami Marlins, it’s easy to forget that season had a second half. After the All-Star Break, the Marlins were 42-25. The season could just as easily started the way that it finished.
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How It Could Not
Well, a 16-22 start is a 16-22 start. The slide actually hit 19-29 before the turnaround really began in earnest, and the Marlins were 27-33 at the sixty game point. So obviously, that kind of start would be quite the nonstarter for postseason play.
However, that’s only part of the problem. Between that septuagenarian manager, Steve Bartman’s antics in left field, and the cash strapped roster, baseball fans often treat this team historically like some team that stumbled into the playoffs with a losing record and lucked out. Again, they were 42-25 in the second half. From the end of May onwards, they had the best record in the majors. They were the best team in baseball by multiple measures, for over 100 regular-season games.
That is…unlikely to be true of the 2020 Miami Marlins roster. The 2003 Miami Marlins were also the culmination of a homegrown core, a handful of key free agents, and two white-hot prospects all catching fire at once. Only one of those three factors is a possibility for the 2020 Marlins.
How 2020 Miami Marlins could play out like the 2008 Florida Marlins.
Unlike the 2003 World Champs, the 2008 Miami Marlins tend to fall through the cracks for all but the most diehard Marlins fans. Wire to wire though, a case can be made that the 2008 club was actually one of the four most exciting teams in franchise history.
Following an injury-plagued, disappointing 2007 season, the Marlins front office helped to further buoy fan confidence by dealing fan favorites Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to Detroit in what is widely considered one of the worst trades of the century. It did not go over well. Expectations were low, despite budding superstar Hanley Ramirez.
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Which made it all the more awesome when the 2008 club got off to a blistering start and spent almost the entire first two months of the season in first place in the NL East. As many as ten games over .500 at one point, they wrapped May at 31-23 and were 32-28 at the sixty game mark.
The success was so good and so sudden, there was even a week heading into the MLB trade deadline where it looked like the Miami Marlins were going to deal one of their top prospects in order to land disgruntled superstar Manny Ramirez. The asking price proved too steep though- some kid named Giancarlo Stanton.
How It Could Not
The 2008 Miami Marlins also had a well-established core. Multiple All-Stars. Multiple players that had won awards. Received Rookie of the Year votes. Won it in Hanley’s case, who was one of the ten best players in the sport at the time.
Unfortunately, also not the case with the 2020 Marlins crew. This will be the season that big jump in talent first happens, much more akin to the 2000 or 2006 teams if this team is to be memorable. And both those clubs either played inconsistently or severely struggled early. In fact, the 2006 team made MLB history by briefly making it back to .500 after being as many as twenty games under.
The 2008 Marlins team is easily one of the best examples in the team’s history of starting fast. The only catch is it also had one of the strongest existing foundations.
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Verdict: The 2008 Miami Marlins are the model, but expect a 2003 start.