PHILADELPHIA -- Seven months ago when the Marlins reported to big league camp in Jupiter, Fla., not even the organization’s wildest dreams featured meaningful games with fewer than a handful of games remaining.
The Marlins’ improbable run came to a close in Thursday night’s 1-0 loss to the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, where they were officially eliminated from postseason contention.
Before Opening Day, FanGraphs predicted Miami (77-82) to win 69.6 games and finish last in the National League East. The inexperienced Marlins were given a 1.3 percent chance at making the postseason, so no one expected the ball club to still be in the hunt with four games remaining in the regular season.
“Our No. 1 focus was going to be to just try to get better every day and try to raise the floor, not only on the players that we're going to have on the roster at a given time and try to get everybody a little bit better as we went along, but then also our group now -- our staff and players -- creating a culture that puts them in place that we believe is going to lead to sustainability,” manager Clayton McCullough said. “And while [it's] disappointing to get here and know that our season is going to end on Sunday, [it] doesn't take away, I think, from taking a step back -- a 30,000-foot view -- on so many what we feel like are real steps that we took throughout this season and the strides that a lot of our players have made from that end. Tonight won't diminish that.”
Even though the Marlins are no longer in the race, they could spoil the Mets’ chances this weekend in Miami. New York is one game up on Cincinnati for the third and final NL Wild Card spot. The NL East rivals have a bit of history in that regard; in consecutive years (2007-08), Miami knocked New York out of postseason contention on the final day of the season.
Miami will line up flamethrowing right-handers Sandy Alcantara, Eury Pérez and Edward Cabrera.
“More games to be played,” said Xavier Edwards, who is one of four current Marlins who were on the club’s 2023 NL Wild Card Series roster. “We may be out of contention, but [we have] three more big league games to play to wrap up the season and a chance to potentially knock someone out as well. We're going to be coming to play hard the next three games and finish on a strong note.”
On the mound, right-hander Janson Junk allowed just one run on five hits over 4 2/3 innings, walking no batters and striking out four to close out his season. Four relievers combined to toss 3 1/3 scoreless frames.
Junk, who entered the season with 15 career outings (seven starts) in the Majors, embodies the 2025 Marlins.
The 29-year-old didn’t make the Opening Day roster but found himself back in the big leagues on May 24 in a long-relief role before moving into the rotation. In 21 games (16 starts) this season, Junk compiled a 4.17 ERA and an MLB-best 2.9% walk percentage (among pitchers with minimum 100 innings) across 110 frames.
“There's been ups and downs, but there's been a lot of learning and understanding that I can play at a high level in this league, where before it was back and forth between the Minors and the big leagues,” Junk said. “It was nice to just have some runway to go through those failures, go through the success, navigate a season. And that's been really helpful.”
In Thursday’s series finale, unfortunately, Miami’s bats had nothing to show for their traffic (nine left on base) against Walker Buehler (five innings), Taijuan Walker (two innings), Matt Strahm (one inning) and David Robertson (one inning).
But Edwards, who walked three times, sees the long-term vision. The club is ahead of schedule; there’s no reason why it cannot be in a better position this time a year from now.
“You see the growth we had throughout the season and not giving up and [cashing] it in when it probably could have been easy to and just kind of fighting and playing our way back into meaningful games in September,” Edwards said. “It's just important to move forward and build off it for the years to follow. Proud of this group and proud of the fight that we've shown -- rattle off with seven straight wins when it already kind of looked like we could have been down and out. And teams with better records were kind of laying down and rolling over the last few weeks, and we didn't. We didn't pack it in, and we kept going. So proud of this group.”