Marlins Define Misery In 2013
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Even before the 2013 regular season began, most fans knew the Miami Marlins were going to be a bad team. But the Marlins are threatening record territory as they continue to lose games through the final weeks of the regular season.
After dropping another game to the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday night, the Marlins record stands at 55-96 on the season. The won-loss record gives Miami a winning percentage of just .364 for the 2013 season with 11 games left on the schedule.
Perhaps the best news for the Marlins is that while this season is bad, it can't eclipse the franchise's worst season, 1998. That was the first season after the team won its first World Series and ownership decided to auction off the talent on the team.
The 1998 Marlins finished with a 54-108 record and a .333 winning percentage, both of which were record lows for the franchise.
But the numbers Miami has put up this year really paints the complete picture of how poorly the Marlins played this season under the tutelage of owner Jeffrey Loria.
The Marlins are last in the National League in runs per game (3.21), total runs (485), hits (1177), home runs (90), RBI's (458), batting average (.231), on-base percentage (.291), slugging percentage (.336), OPS (.627), OPS+ (72), total bases (1711).
Many of those categories the Marlins were so far back of the next to last team that there was no way the Fish could climb out of the cellar. In total bases, the Marlins were more than 200 behind the Mets. In total runs, the Marlins were almost 100 runs behind the San Diego Padres. In RBI's, the Marlins were 77 behind the Padres.
The one area the Marlins may not finish dead last in this season is attendance, but it will be close. Currently, the Marlins are 29th in the league in attendance with 1,445,083 tickets sold for an average crowd of 19,267. The team ranked last, the Tampa Bay Rays, has sold 1,390,037 tickets for an average crowd of 18,533 per game.
The franchise has gone through eight managers since the last World Series win in 2003 and sold off most of the talent it had acquired until this season. The Marlins tanked this season and will head into the offseason without an obvious plan for how to improve the franchise.
Owner Jeffrey Loria is said to be in complete control of decisions while baseball minds like Larry Beinfest are relegated to the sideline. It's causing chaos in the front office according to multiple reports in the media.
The Fish have some young talent on the roster namely, Jose Fernandez, Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Adeiny Hechavarria, Nathan Eovaldi, and others. The team is still young and with a few additional pieces could at least contend for a wild card spot in the coming years.
Whether or not Loria will finally invest the money and keep the money in place for the long-term remains to be seen. The first test will be whether he will pay up the big money required to keep Stanton on the team or if he will be the latest future star to be sold off for peanuts by the Marlins.
