Marlins defy the odds to join playoffs for third time in history
The Marlins, ravaged by COVID-19 early in the season and doubted by outsiders throughout, are back in the playoffs for the first time since 2003 when they won the World Series.
Brandon Kintzler had the bases loaded, one out and the batter he wanted at the plate. Shortstop Miguel Rojas stood behind him, ready to make a play.
Yankees leadoff hitter DJ LeMahieu, in the running for MLB’s batting title, chopped Kintzler’s 92-mph sinker over the mound and just to the right of second base.
“He did exactly what I wanted him to do, exactly what I planned, exactly what I had seen him do before,” Kintzler said. “The guy’s a great hitter, but that’s just for me a great situation.”
Rojas darted to grab the ball. Rojas tapped his foot on second base and fired to Jesus Aguilar at first base for the inningending double play.
The Marlins beat the New York Yankees 4-3 in 10 innings on Friday. The dugout clears. The celebration begins. A 16year playoff drought comes to an end.
The Marlins, for the first time since 2003 and just the third time in franchise history, are heading to the playoffs. They are the National League East runners-up, a spot that ensures a postseason berth in 2020’s expanded playoff field. The playoff drought was the longest in the NL and second longest in MLB, only behind the Mariners, who last reached the playoffs in 2001.
The Marlins’ return to the postseason came with a win against the same team they
beat to win the 2003 World Series and the same team Marlins manager
Don Mattingly and CEO Derek Jeter played with for their entire careers. It also came on the six-year anniversary of Jeter’s final home game as a Yankees player and the four-year anniversary of Marlins ace Jose Fernandez’s death.
Mattingly’s wife, Lori, sent Mattingly a photo of him and Fernandez on Friday morning.
“I’ve got a bracelet that I’ve worn ever since with his number on it that I never really take off,” Mattingly said pregame. “Changed my exercise programs to instead of 15 reps, 16 reps for his number. It is an emotional day. You think back about Jose and what he meant and just what kind of spirit he was.”
This run to the playoffs wasn’t supposed to happen, if the outsiders were to be believed.
The Marlins were coming off a 105-loss season and had lost a combined 203 games over the past two seasons since the start of the rebuild led by the Bruce Sherman and Jeter ownership group.
This is a team that was given a 0.2 percent chance to make the playoffs heading into spring training, a team that spent a week quarantined after 18 players tested positive for COVID-19, a team that had 18 players make MLB debuts and made nearly 175 roster moves, a team that had a 23-day road trip to start the season and is on a 24-day stretch with 28 games to end the season.
And this is a team making its way to the postseason.
As the celebration commenced at Yankee Stadium, the Marlins’ shirts sent a loud message.
“RESPECT MIAMI,” they read in all capital letters.
“Hopefully,” Mattingly said, “this is the very beginning of it.”
The Marlins set that mentality from the time they step foot onto the field at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium Complex in Jupiter for spring training.
“I expect our guys to be competitive right now,” Jeter said a week into Grapefruit League games.
The goal was re-emphasized when baseball activities resumed in June following a three-plus-month layoff due to the coronavirus pandemic that also shortened the regular season to 60 games. Calls of “Why Not Us?” resonated through the rebuilding organization.
“We’re going to surprise a lot of people,” Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara said at the time.
Most shrugged off the assertions. It’s preseason optimism. Nobody has played yet. So, yes, why not the Marlins? After a few weeks, the general thought throughout baseball would be that the
Marlins would be back at their all-to-familiar place at the bottom of the division.
But, to the Marlins, this wasn’t lip service. As the season drew closer, they saw the pieces they had, the talent they had, even if others shrugged them off.
Mainstays like Rojas, Brian Anderson, Jorge Alfaro, Alcantara and
Pablo Lopez were primed for big seasons. There was hope Lewis Brinson would finally figure things out at the plate.
Offseason acquisitions in Corey Dickerson, Jesus Aguilar, Kintzler, Yimi Garcia, Francisco Cervelli, Matt Joyce and Brad Boxberger brought a veteran presence to a youth-laden clubhouse. Outfielder Starling Marte, acquired at the trade deadline, would eventually join that list.
Top prospects were on the cusp of their big-league debuts. Many of them were brought into the organization through trades that shipped off top players such as Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, J.T. Realmuto and Dee Gordon.
The two years of painstaking struggles, the Marlins hoped, were about to pay off.
“They wanted to build sustainable winners,” said Rojas, one of the rare veteran holdovers from before the ownership change. “This is the first step in that.”
For Kintzler, the dream started to feel like it could become a reality on Aug. 4. The Marlins were in Baltimore, set to play their first game in nine days. They had been cooped up in a Philadelphia hotel for a week after a COVID-19 outbreak occurred inside their traveling party, the result of a “false sense of security and comfort” in Jeter’s words after a successful summer camp in Miami.
They were missing 18 players and two coaches because of the coronavirus. Another player, Isan Diaz, opted out. The 13 players who tested negative throughout — “Los Treces” as they became known among the team — had just two formal practices before getting back into live games. Mattingly had to work with a roster that included players he didn’t formally meet until the game started.
The Marlins won that first game back, 4-0. They swept the four-game, three-day series with the Orioles. Their second chance was here. They were taking advantage of it.
“It was us against the world,” Kintzler said. “Everyone was already mad at us, thinking that we messed up for getting COVID. We just came together.”
The Marlins went through the usual ebbs and flows of a season — a fivegame losing streak here, winning five of seven there — but somehow managed to win the key games to keep the season afloat. Some examples:
Aug. 21: The Marlins started a five-game road series against the Washington Nationals. Miami was on a five-game losing streak and were sitting at .500 on the season. Rojas, the first player to return from COVID-19, belts a three-run home run in his first at-bat to lift the Marlins to a 3-2 victory. Miami went on to take three of five games in the set and opened its next series against the Mets by sweeping a doubleheader.
Aug. 31: The Marlins were swept at home in a three-game series with the Tampa Bay Rays and now had to make a day trip up to New York to make up their final game against the Mets that was postponed four days earlier to protest racial injustice. It was supposed to be one of Miami’s final two off days of the season as part of a five-game homestand. Instead, a trek to Citi Field and another battle with Jacob deGrom. The Marlins won 5-3.
Sept. 10: Miami was just handed an historical 29-9 loss by the Braves in Atlanta. A 15-game, 11-day homestand with four doubleheaders and no off days awaited them.
The Marlins began with a 7-6, walk-off victory over the Phillies, the team nipping at their heels for second place in the division. They take five of seven against Philadelphia and go 9-6 on the homestand.
Thursday: The Marlins are wrapping up a four-game series with the Braves at Truist Park. They are on a four-game losing streak. A loss here means they are tied with the Phillies for second place in the NL East going into the final three days of the season. The game is delayed more than 90 minutes as rain soaks the field. Lopez, who 15 days earlier started the 29-9 loss, throws five scoreless innings and Miami wins 4-2.
It set the stage for Friday, the chance to do the unlikely, the chance to make the playoffs.
“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Kintzler said.
“We’re playing with house money. ... We really don’t care if anyone says we’re overachievers. I mean, why are we overachievers? Because some experts thought we weren’t going to win? We knew we were going to win the whole time.”