The Marlins are MLB's hottest team. And it looks like they're for real

Somewhat lost in all of Sunday’s drama about the Marlins lifting Eury Pérez after seven perfect innings was that it wasn’t just about pitch count, health, modern analytics, or whatever narrative you choose to apply. It’s exactly what manager Clayton McCullough said it was. It’s that the goal here isn’t just about regular-season games, not anymore. It’s reasonable to look beyond September.

“[We’re] looking to play beyond the regular season,” McCullough said. ”Eury's going to be an important part of that.”

Since the start of June, the Marlins are 23-8, the best record in baseball. They’ve allowed the fewest runs in the National League (second overall); they have the best OPS in the Majors (among teams that don’t call Coors Field home); they’ve played the third-best defense, after being bottom-five through the end of May.

As the Mets continue to sputter into the void and the Nationals prove unable to find enough pitching to support their shockingly good lineup, the 49-42 Marlins are in third place, just four games behind a Braves team scuffling to maintain their hot start. Entering this week’s first-half-ending homestand against Seattle and Cleveland, the Marlins own the third NL Wild Card spot. (Their series against the AL West-leading Mariners begins Tuesday night.)

Unlike three years ago, when the underwhelming 2023 Marlins backed into a Wild Card spot while being outscored more than any other playoff team in history, the 2026 group might actually have something real going here. How real? The playoff odds, via FanGraphs, have risen to a one-in-three chance. That’s real enough to dream on.

How real? Let’s start with this: It’s not entirely unexpected.

We’re going to take a minor – and possibly premature – victory lap here, just for a moment. Last fall, the upsides of this roster were clear enough that when looking to see which teams might emulate the Blue Jays' run from a losing season in 2024 to the World Series in '25, the Marlins were one of the first teams that came to mind. In February, the headline for our NL East season preview here at MLB.com made it clear that this was a four-team race, not a three-teamer. (Nevermind that we lumped the Marlins in with the Braves, Phillies, and Mets, not Nationals.)

The rationale at the time was clear. For one thing, the 2025 Marlins were more competitive than you noticed; after their low-water mark of 25-41 on June 11, Miami then went 54-42 over the final four months, a 91-win pace. That was the third-best record in the National League, and it was better than the Dodgers. It wasn’t the Braves in third place behind the Phillies and Mets; it was the Marlins, who topped Atlanta by three wins.

That helped to promise more, particularly since returning ace Sandy Alcantara had looked far better in the second half than he had in the first half. They seemed to finally have enough pitching that trading an arm (Edward Cabrera) for a bat (Owen Caissie plus two prospects) made sense. There were very interesting things happening last year in terms of how they’d added bat speed to a team that already had the shortest and flattest swings. And while “doing weird stuff” like having coaches call pitches rather than catchers – among other things – wasn’t universally hailed around the game, it at least showed a willingness and capacity to try to be different.

It wasn’t just here, either. Over at FanGraphs, when Michael Baumann ran a study last fall to try to see if he could predict who would be the next Maikel Garcia or Geraldo Perdomo – i.e., light hitters who blossomed into far more – two of the three names he landed on were Marlins, in Xavier Edwards and Liam Hicks. Both ended up having strong All-Star cases this year, though each fell just short.

It didn’t work right away. Thanks in part to 2025 breakout bat Kyle Stowers injuring his hamstring just before Opening Day and early injuries in the rotation, Miami fell to eight games under .500 after an end-of-May sweep at the hands of the Mets. That, according to McCullough, was something of a wakeup call.

“Maybe it took us getting our butts kicked three days in a row in Citi Field to send shockwaves through [us] a little bit, that we can decide how we want our season to go,” he told MLB.com’s Christina De Nicola at the end of June. “It's one thing to play well, and for someone to beat you. It's another to just not perform up to your capabilities and [up to] a standard that we're trying to set here for ourselves. And so after some point, you just have to get fed up with it, and have to go play better.”

That's exactly what’s happened – in all three areas of the game. They’re the first team to ever go from eight games under .500 to six or more games over in the span of a single calendar month, per the Elias Sports Bureau.

The pitching got better.

• Through end of May: 4.38 ERA (21st in MLB)
• June & July: 3.53 ERA (2nd)

This was even better before the first week of July, which required them to go through Colorado and Sacramento, but they all count. This is a little about how good Pérez has looked in three starts since returning from injury, and a little about moving on from underperformers like Chris Paddack, and a little about 32-year-old reliever Michael Petersen, claimed off waivers from Atlanta last summer, using his fastball more and striking out 37% of hitters in June.

But while there’s something obviously to be said about All-Star Max Meyer and that Alcantara has the most starts of six or more innings in baseball, the key thing we’re looking at is simply “the bullpen stopped walking everyone.” Miami’s April relievers had a 14% walk rate, the second-highest in baseball. In June? That was cut down to 8%, or eighth-lowest.

The lineup got better.

• Through end of May: .693 OPS (22nd)
• June & July: .833 OPS (2nd)

Getting Stowers back from injury helped, obviously, and, as with Paddack, moving on from a free-agent signing that didn't work out (first baseman Christopher Morel) opened up space for someone else. In this case, that’s indirectly outfielder Heriberto Hernández (a Minor League free agent ahead of 2025), who has a 117 OPS+ in parts of two seasons with Miami. It's been easier to slot him into left field as Stowers has been transitioning to play more first base and Opening Day first baseman Connor Norby was optioned to Triple-A.

In Edwards (acquired from Tampa Bay in a minor 2022 deal) and Otto López (claimed off waivers from the Giants early in the 2024 season, ironically to take a spot left empty by Pérez when he required Tommy John surgery), the Marlins have arguably the best middle-infield duo in the game. Maybe that’s understating it; the .870 OPS they’re getting out of those two spots is more than 100 points clear of second-best Kansas City, and it’s the best since the Corey Seager / Marcus Semien 2023 Rangers – a team that won the World Series.

The defense got better.

The eye test said Miami’s defense was in rough shape to start the season, and the metrics largely agreed. And then?

• Through end of May: minus-10 Fielding Run Value (tied-26th)
• June & July: +11 Fielding Run Value (tied-3rd)

That’s a truly stunning in-season turnaround. How did they do it? It shouldn’t always be this simple, but sometimes it is. On May 4, Opening Day catcher Agustín Ramírez was sent down to Triple-A, with catching prospect Joe Mack called up to replace him. Ramirez had posted the second-most homers (21) on the 2025 Marlins, but across ‘25 and the first month of ‘26 he’d been the weakest defensive catcher in the National League, charged with minus-17 Fielding Runs.

Mack brought with him a reputation for defensive excellence, and he’s done nothing to dispute that report. Since his arrival, he’s been tied as the best catcher in the National League, contributing +5 Fielding Runs, in large part to his tied-for-best-in-baseball 16 runners thrown out attempting to steal.

There’s been improvement, too, from Caissie (minus-7 the first two months, then a nearly-average minus-1 in June) and Hernández (minus-2 before June, +2 in June). Mostly, though, it’s hard to overstate how big a deal going from very poor catching defense to very good catching defense can be.

Where, then, does this leave Miami? It might leave Alcantara there after the Trade Deadline, an outcome few expected. It might even leave them playing ball in October. Unlike three years ago, this one feels more real. There’s a lot of good happening here right now.