Do the Marlins have their own brand of baseball and are we seeing it?

The game on April 9 in New York against the Mets was a small microcosm of the Marlins' brand of baseball. Both the current mix of brash talent and raw enthusiasm and, as the franchise is now in its 33rd season, hints of historic lineages of bulldog pitching and flashy defense.

If you want to compare prowess and presence, righty Max Meyer’s brand of uncompromising certainty alludes to the likes of Josh Beckett or Josh Johnson. Marlins broadcaster Jeff Nelson sums Meyer up like this: “He pitches with no fear.” Oh, and it took the Mets 6 ⅓ innings to get a hit off Meyer. With the flair of web gems and capitalizing on errors to support the effort, the Marlins left New York with a win and avoided the sweep.

It was a notable difference from the game prior.

The second game of the series on April 8 was moved up to 4:10 pm due to the chilly weather (even still the temperature was 44° at first pitch). The unavoidable growing pain moment for the Marlins this past week was the near-viral choice to walk Juan Soto to get to Pete Alonso in the bottom of the sixth. Underestimating the Polar Bear is a mistake you’d think all of baseball would learn from, but it seems to keep occurring, much to the delight of the Mets’ faithful. Not so much the Marlins, when he dumped an 0-1 breaking ball into the gap to clear the bases.

Ultimately the Marlins would lose the game Tuesday by a score of 10-5. But hey across the board, room for growth. If the Marlins can let the collateral mishaps roll off their collective backs like water off a duck, next time the outcome may be more in their favor.

There was a subtle turning point on April 9. Blink and you miss it.

In the top of the fifth with a runner on first, Jonah Bride (at that point 2-for-32 on the season at the plate) came up to bat. And, he rolled an obvious double-play ball to Mets second baseman Brett Baty who…absolutely airmailed it across the infield.

Matt Mervis turned the next pitch into a 1-0 lead for the Fish in the top of the fifth. The energy was weird and the Marlins didn’t wait around to find out if it was going to go the Mets' way or not. Mervis took care of that. It was a little spark, a little “why not us?” energy instead.

Bride, for his part, turned that pseudo-second chance E4 energy and translated into a much-needed RBI in the ninth.

The Nats series had more of those glimmers of Marlins Baseball™️. Xavier Edwards bunting to move runners up, but instead his hustle turns the sac attempt into a bunt base hit. Scoring on a passed ball that same inning. Using the energy of the game as another tool to get under the opposing team’s skin.

This past week, Marlins players showed a lot of aggression, and flashed some really nice leather. The bedrock of consistency with fundamentals is what will wind up being the key piece for the Fish going into the next week of play, particularly if they continue to tinker with this kind of small ball, brazen, make-it-happen attitude.

Play aggressive but smart, fearlessly but with confidence—not recklessness. If you don't "make it happen," learn from what does happen. Force more of those moments when the complacency of an airmailed, easy-out grounder turns into an RBI one pitch later. That momentum built and built through the eventful see-saw Marlins win to wrap things up against Washington on Sunday. On a player level, Matt Mervis will tug that same momentum into Tuesday’s series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks, having hit a home run in each of the last three games.

So, 2025’s squad might be the “why not us?” team, where the only requirement is underestimating the Fish and seeing what shakes out. Hopefully more of that scrappy brand of baseball.

The Marlins are just growing up into a franchise with some years on it, and much like life, baseball is a game of opportunities. If you can wring out as much experience as possible from those opportunities, you might be onto something.


Monday MVP
Highlighting a particular player from the previous week of play

This week’s Monday MVP can’t be just one player. It’s gotta be the whole outfield.

From Derek Hill’s ridiculous catches, Kyle Stowers' timely hitting, and Griffin Conine making left field his own, the Marlins outfield has been a sight to see lately.

Dane Myers might have taken the cake with this face plant into the wall to end Wednesday’s game in Queens.