Despite walk-off win against the Orioles, the Marlins have room to grow
The Miami Marlins have some of the top hitters in baseball.
That, however, hasn’t stopped them from dropping four of their last five games — even if they beat the Baltimore Orioles Thursday 4-3 thanks to a walk-off error.
Still, the Marlins remain four games below .500 with a record of 17-21. How Miami arrived here after at one point being at the top of the National League East standings is worthwhile to examine.
“It’s good for us to hang in there and to win a close game here at home and salvage this series,” manager Clayton McCullough said Thursday evening after the victory. “Hopefully this is something that kind of can get us going a little bit.”
Despite their record, the Marlins currently own the ninth-best batting average in baseball. Miami’s three best hitters — Otto Lopez, Xavier Edwards and Liam Hicks — rank third, seventh and 12th – in terms of batting average. Hicks’ 34 RBI even lead the majors, putting him ahead of stars such as Aaron Judge, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.
“There’s a lot of highs and lows,” Hicks said, explaining that he doesn’t want to “take one game too serious. You can have one bad game then the next day be great. You try to make each game individual and not really combine them all so just move on and try and be a good teammate when you’re not playing well.”
That said, they also have an outfielder in Jakob Marsee who has gotten off to equally putrid start. Despite Marsee’s impressive rookie campaign, he’s currently hitting .176, the second worst among qualified outfielders.
“Honestly, I think I’m just missing my pitches, and if I miss my pitches, I get put in a hole and these pitchers have good stuff to put you away,” Marsee said. “That’s more of a me problem. I have to keep working to tighten up the mechanics and simplifying things.”
Defensively, however, is where some of the issues begin. Generally speaking, the pitching has been OK. The Marlins rank 15th in ERA as well as a surprising sixth in both opponent’s batting average and hits.
That said, the free agent signing of Chris Paddack has seemingly proved to be a mistake. The 30-year-old right-hander posted a 0-5 record prior to being designated for assignment on Tuesday. In his five starts, Paddack gave up a team-high 26 earned runs, posting a disappointing 7.63 ERA.
“It came down to a performance thing,” McCullough said, later adding “looking at Chris’ body of work as a whole, while there were some things under the hood that weren’t as bad as the numbers were showing, I think performance becomes the driving factor.”
Then comes the defense. The Marlins find themselves near the bottom of pack – 29th to be exact – in two key areas, fielding percentage and errors. That the Marlins managed to win Thursday’s game off an error when Orioles third baseman Coby Mayo bobbled the throw that allowed Joe Mack to score was nothing short of ironic.
“Winning with all these guys is what I always wanted to do, and I’m just really grateful to be able to help out a team,” Mack said.
The return of Kyle Stowers, who made his first All-Star appearance in 2025, could potentially help. Only 15 games into his season due to a hamstring injury that bumped back his debut, Stowers provides adequate defense while excelling as a hitter. The only issue: his health, a key factor considering he missed Thursday’s contest and hasn’t played well — his .220 batting average pales in comparison to the .281 that he posted through his first 16 contests last season — since coming back.
If Stowers and Marsee return to form, the Marlins could be a bit better offensively. Find a gem in the minors to replace Paddack, and they could give themselves a better chance defensively. Let the Marlins continue to play error-free as they did in Thursday’s victory, and they might actually have a good ball club.
This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 10:30 PM.
