First Impressions

A few thoughts on the Marlins' Opening Weekend

I was initially going to call this post, “What we Learned,” but the truth is we really didn’t learn anything in the Marlins’ season-opening 4-game series against the Mets.

Miami lost 3 out of 4 to an undeniably superior ballclub, one that won 101 games a season ago and sports the largest payroll in the history of the sport in 2023. Even as they contend with some key injuries, the Mets are expected by virtually all to play in October again this year, and they took care of business in front of a largely Queens South crowd over the last 4 days. All that was missing were the Shake Shack burgers (I’ll take a double with cheese and no tomato) and the takeoffs from LaGuardia.

Declaring victory or defeat in any regard after the first of 52 series the Marlins will play over the next 6 months is a fool’s errand. And, as you’ll see as we share this journey, my intention in starting this Substack is not to offer a knee-jerk reaction every time the wind blows. That’s for others who cover the team and for Twitter.

What I plan to do is attempt to provide reasoned perspective at various intervals. My “View from the Bleachers,” a bit removed—coupled with intimate knowledge of the Game and the organization—provide a good foundation for doing precisely that.

So instead of “What we Learned,” here are few “First Impressions” from Opening Weekend:

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The offense we saw in the first 4 games, which totaled 8 runs, looked a lot like the offense we watched the last 5 years.

Since the Sherman/Jeter ownership traded away Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich within weeks of purchasing the team, the Marlins have struggled to score runs because it’s hard to string 3 or 4 hits together in an inning. Teams that produce runs at an above-average rate in this era, hit doubles and home runs. Since the start of 2018, the Marlins are 30th out of 30 major league clubs in doubles and 29th in homers, having hit one more than the Tigers.