With one goal and an ‘us against the world’ mentality, Marlins have playoff push on mind
Who’s ready for what should be a wild final four weeks of the Miami Marlins’ regular season?
After sweeping a four-game series with the Washington Nationals, the Marlins enter the week as one of four teams — yes, four teams — tied for the National League’s third and final wild card spot.
Also in the mix for the NL’s final seat in the postseason: The Arizona Diamondbacks, San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds.
Plus, the Chicago Cubs are only three games ahead of the quartet in the second wild card spot and play 10 games against the Giants and Diamondbacks down the stretch, so their spot isn’t necessarily set in stone yet either.
The season is coming down to the wire. As much as Marlins manager Skip Schumaker doesn’t want to admit it, each game at this point becomes more magnified, each result more significant. One big win or one crushing loss can swing a team’s chances of playing in October.
“You’ve got to keep battling out there,” outfielder Bryan De La Cruz said. “You’ve got to understand that we were not part of the favorites at the beginning of the year, so it’s actually a blessing to be part of the race. ... We have one goal, which is to make the playoffs.”
Added third baseman Jake Burger: “It’s us against the world. It’s just go out there and lay it all on the field.”
And center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr.: “Every game is important. We’re going to treat every game like it’s Game 7 of the World Series until we get there.”
Now, all three of these players have something in common: This is their first time playing meaningful September games at the end of a full season. Pressure, or at least heightened expectations, generally come with that.
The Marlins’ coaching staff — a group that has a slew of postseason experience from both their playing and coaching days — has been trying to minimize that extra burden.
“The message in spring training was if you treat the first game like a playoff game that when you get to September meaningful games, you’ve been through it for the first five months of the season,” Schumaker said. “There’s no doubt that you do [feel it]. You’re human, so you’re going to feel a little bit more pressure when you’re looking and the standings and that type of stuff. And these games are meaningful. That’s not to say they weren’t meaningful in April, May, June, but when you’ve got [less than] 30 games left, they’re meaningful. But I don’t want to put more added pressure [on the players] and we don’t want to give them the sense that we’re panicking. We have gone about the same business the exact same way from spring training on. Today’s the most important day. We’re winning today. That’s the message.”
Building on Nationals series
The Marlins took that message to heart in their series sweep against the Nationals. Miami outscored Washington 31-15 over the four games for their longest win streak since the All-Star Break.
Miami slugged eight home runs, averaged 12.5 hits per game and gave up just 11 earned runs.
“You hope it creates momentum,” Schumaker said.
Especially with the stretch of games Miami has coming up.
The Marlins are going to play 16 games in 16 days without a day off starting Tuesday. The first 13 of those games are against teams currently in the playoff field: Three at home against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a seven-game road trip to the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers and then a three-game series against the Atlanta Braves to start a nine-game homestand.
Miami then closes its season with six games against the Mets (three at home, three on the road), three more at home with the Brewers and three on the road against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
All told, it’s the fifth-toughest remaining schedule in MLB based on opponent win percentage. By comparison, the Giants have the 16th-toughest remaining schedule, the Cubs 17th, the Diamondbacks 22nd and Reds 25th.
“From now on, you’ve got to think that we’re in the playoffs already,” said starting pitcher Johnny Cueto, who won a World Series in 2015. “You’ve got to play each game the same way, like we’re in the playoffs. Hopefully, once we make the playoffs, we will continue like this moving forward.”
Looking at tiebreaker scenarios
Because there are so many teams still in contention, let’s take a quick look at the tiebreaker scenarios should Miami find itself in that position with any of the remaining teams.
The first tiebreaker is head-to-head record. Miami has a winning record against both the Cubs (4-2) and Diamondbacks (4-2) but split the season series with both the Reds (3-3) and Giants (3-3).
Should Miami end up tied with either Cincinnati or San Francisco, the second tiebreaker is intradivision record — a team’s record against its division opponents. Miami, with 12 NL East games left to play, is 19-21 against NL East teams (.475 win percentage). Cincinnati is 18-25 against the NL Central (.419 win percentage) with nine division games left to play while San Francisco is 19-14 against the NL West (.578) with 19 division games left to play.
Long story short: Miami at the moment owns head-to-head tiebreakers against everyone but the Giants among those in the wild card race.
It sets the stage for a chaotic 25-game stretch to close out the season.
So buckle up and enjoy the ride.
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