The Miami Marlins are a winning baseball team. For now. That revelation comes after one of their finest months ever, a 20-6 run that began, hilariously enough, after being swept in a three-game series by the gangrenous Mets and falling behind them in the NL East race. This would be a point of deep shame for most teams, but the Fish have been coated, breaded, and fried in shame for most of their existence, and utterly wretched since their last World Series championship 23 years ago. They ended May with a 26-34 record. Getting swept by the Mets, even these Mets, fell safely under the category of "Things I Don't Have To Notice For Any Reason Whatsoever."
But the curative powers of the Mets beating you are apparently underappreciated: Since that moment, the Mets haven't beaten any one team twice in a row, while the Marlins are 46-40 on the season and suddenly mere percentage points out of a wild-card spot for the first time in ... oh god, don't make us look this up. We've waded through enough of the Marlins' historical cesspool as it is.
Still, the Marlins have won more games in a calendar month only one other time in their history—May of 2012, when they won 21—and had a run differential of plus-53, their best in any month ever. They are the best team in baseball if the season had started on June 1, and it's hard to comprehend why, because any thought when it comes to the Miami Marlins begins with "What?" then sails past "Why?" and lands on "Leave me alone, you quivering bag of coleslaw in human clothes."
The Marlins' best hitter, shortstop Otto Lopez, leads MLB in hits and is .001 behind the recently injured Yandy Diaz for the thoroughly discredited batting championship. Their best home run hitter, Liam Hicks, just came off the IL on Tuesday, and leads the team with 13 dingers and 53 RBI. None of their players are an All-Star ballot finalist, although Ernie Clement's presence there has deflated the achievement a little bit. Their pitching has carried them all season despite only three-fifths of their original starting rotation still being healthy, and the best of those is ... go on, guess ... Max Meyer, with a 9-0 record and 2.60 ERA.
Better yet, Miami's third-highest paid player is Giancarlo Stanton, who hasn't been a Marlin in nine years but is still getting a chunk of his salary from the team through 2027. Their total 2026 payroll, at about $80 million, is second-lowest in MLB, ahead of only the Cleveland Guardians, who are also winning despite all the financial evidence. For those of you who would prefer not to have the 2027 MLB season binned from the start by the 30 lampreys who want a salary cap, the Marlins are a team to care about, if only for a reason other than having a guy named Otto on the roster.
But 20-6 is 20-6, and the Marlins are suddenly traveling in a different neighborhood. This may not be as surprising as Cape Verde, but they still lost only six games in the month, when their historical average runs much closer to six losses per week. The Marlins are ready to leave South Florida's category of running jokes—as of this moment, primarily occupied by the Dolphins—or perhaps this is just a very false positive with a second half of more typical disappointment on the horizon. Still, the future takes care of itself, and a pennant race that includes the Marlins is weird enough to be desirable.
This is the time to consider "what the hell" as reason enough to get even mildly invested in the Fish. As they are today may be as good as this gets. But don't take our word for it; ask their catcher Joe Mack. “Calendar is going to change, and it's nothing different,” he said after homering in Tuesday night's 14-3 win over Colorado. “You're at where you're at, you're at where your feet are." Now there's a battle cry for the playoff run.
