The second of a series of posts to evaluate the teams that the Atlanta Braves will face the most in 2020. This checks in on the still-under-construction Miami Marlins.
In 2019, the Atlanta Braves had their way with a bad Miami Marlins team, winning 15 of the 19 meetings between these two clubs, though eleven of these contests were decided by 2 or fewer runs – and 3 of those went to extra innings.
Getting that kind of result in 2020 will definitely be difficult, but that’s all part of the program that is the NL East.
If there’s a “bottom” to Miami’s reconstruction project, their leadership certainly has to hope that it happened last year.
That edition of the Marlins was an abysmal team. At one point, their record stood at 10-31, en route to a final tally of 57-105 and a whopping 40 games out of 1st.
While there were signs of life at times – a streak of six straight wins in mid-May as part of 13-5 run. But alas, after July 29th, they only managed to win two games in a row once… September 22nd and 23rd.
Baseball has changed substantially over the past couple of decades. Teams are now often ‘all in’ or ‘all out’, and since peaking with a second place finish in 2017 (albeit at a 77-85 record), this club is definitely ‘out’.
In fact, this franchise’s last winning record? That happened in 2009: 87-75 as the Florida Marlins (with Fredi Gonzalez managing).
That won’t happen in 2020 either… but there are incremental strides being made that may allow them to be a pain in the necks of a couple of NL East squads… which has occasionally been the case each year.
Let’s see just what they’ve actually done to date: