There's not much to be excited about when it comes to the 2025 Miami Marlins. I wrote about this in the Defector season preview, but these Fish stink. Sure, they have Sandy Alcantara back, and there are some prospects worth keeping an eye on, but a dour season appears to be on the books, along with yet another last-place finish in the brutal NL East. And yet, at the end of the first weekend of baseball's new season, it is the Marlins, mighty and effervescent, sitting at the top of the division standings. They're 3-1, an extremely temporary juggernaut of clutch hitting and historic walk-off wins.
The Marlins hosted the Pirates in a repeat of last season's opening series, and while 2024 ended with Marlins fans root, root, rooting for an 0-4 home team, this year was different. Where last year's series ended with wins of 5, 6, 2, and 1 runs by the Pirates, every game in the 2025 opener was decided by just one run, with Saturday's going 12 innings. In each game, the Marlins trailed at some point, clawing back to give themselves a chance in the ninth (or later). Let's go win-by-win.
Thursday
After taking a 1-0 lead in the third inning, the Marlins gave up four runs across the fifth and sixth. They clawed back one in the bottom of the sixth, and two in the eighth, with two outs no less. That tied the game up and set the stage for the ninth, where catcher Nick Fortes hit a lead-off triple on a ball to deep center that Oneil Cruz misjudged, first in flight and then again after it ricocheted off the wall. (Cruz didn't have a great series in center; more on that in a bit.) After Pittsburgh intentionally walked Xavier Edwards, Kyle Stowers hit a rope of a line drive down the right field line, driving Fortes in for the win.
Saturday
The wildest game of the series started with a 1-0 Pirates lead after the top of the first, but then the teams traded runs in every half inning between the bottom of the fifth and the bottom of the seventh. It stayed knotted at 3-3 through nine, and then through ten, before Pittsburgh scored in the top half of the 11th, via back-to-back groundouts that advanced ghost runner Ke'Bryan Hayes first to third and then home. The Marlins also took advantage of the ghost runner in the bottom half, though, with two singles scoring Dane Myers and tying things up yet again, this time at four all.
In the top half of the 12th, Bryan Reynolds led off with a single to right, but Tommy Pham was thrown out at home, and the Marlins got out of that half-inning safely. In the bottom half, Cruz had another nightmare: following an intentional walk, the converted shortstop had a fly ball in his glove before dropping it, allowing Jonah Bride to load the bases. After Eric Wagaman grounded into a fielder's choice at home, Myers came to the plate and hit a laser to right-center, bouncing it over the wall to drive in Otto Lopez for another win.
Sunday
Finally, on Sunday, the Marlins trailed again from the start, giving up a run in the top half of the second, though they tied it up in the bottom. Pittsburgh scored in the top of the fifth, but Griffin Conine homered in the bottom of the seventh. This fit, given that the Marlins had inducted Conine's father, Marlins legend Jeff Conine, into the team's Hall of Fame before Sunday's game.
It stayed at 2-2 until the bottom of the ninth: Derek Hill led off with an infield single, stole second, and then advanced to third on a throwing error by catcher Endy Rodriguez. David Bednar, who had lost the Opening Day game, then threw a 2-1 wild pitch that allowed Hill to sprint home and complete the trifecta of walk-offs.
(The Pirates did avenge the Opening Day loss on Friday with a 4-3 win, but the Marlins made them sweat for it: It was 4-1 entering the bottom of the ninth, and the Marlins scored two runs off a Lopez two-run homer before Bednar got two groundouts and a game-ending strikeout of Hill to get out of this hellish weekend with at least one save.)
With the three walk-offs, the Marlins (and, in a less happy way, the Pirates) made plenty of history. Miami is the first team to pick up its first three wins of a season via walk-off since the 2003 Rays (back when they were Devilish), and the first to do it all in the first series of the season since the 1901 Detroit Tigers. Thursday's walk-off was also the first in Marlins Opening Day history. On the flipside, the Pirates are the first team to notch its first three losses of a season thanks to walk-off since the 1924, uh, Pirates. History both rhymes and repeats when it comes to Pittsburgh misery.
The Marlins now turn their eyes in-division, as the Mets come to South Florida for a three-game series. Will the walk-off magic continue? Statistically speaking, no it will not. But weird things happen in early-season baseball, and just did. For now, the Marlins can luxuriate in looking down the standings at New York. Given how low expectations were heading into the season, that's the biggest win of all.
