The Miami Marlins’ first-round triumph over the Cubs on Friday evening in Chicago progressed the club to the divisional round. It additionally established one of the more abnormal measurements in sports: The Marlins are presently 7-0 unequaled in playoff series.
Truth is stranger than fiction. The group regularly picked to complete at the lower part of the National League East has never lost a postseason arrangement in its 28-year history. The club’s two-game compass of the Cubs places them at 24-11 unsurpassed in season finisher games. The 1993 development club made its postseason debut in 1997, clearing the San Francisco Giants in three games in the National League Division Series and impeding the Atlanta Braves in six games before beating the Cleveland Indians in seven to win the World Series.
After six years, the Marlins again did the unimaginable. In the 2003 NLDS, they by and by berated the Giants, this time in four games. The 2003 NLCS will essentially be recalled less for what the Marlins or Cubs did, yet rather due to a Game 6 blunder by a fan named Steve Bartman, who came to over the left field divider to endeavor to arrive at a ball that was catchable for Chicago’s Moises Alou. The Marlins took Game 7 and proceeded to beat Derek Jeter and the force to be reckoned with New York Yankees in six games to guarantee the establishment’s second World Series title.
Quick forward to 2020 and Jeter currently claims the Marlins, who remained above water in probably the choppiest season in baseball history. The group was crushed by MLB’s greatest novel Covid episode during its initial arrangement of the period, constraining the club to supplant the greater part its program while the contaminated players returned a transport from Philadelphia to Miami.
The group didn’t play again for nine days, a lot of time to miss in an entire 162-game timetable, not to mention a dense 60-game run brought about by the pandemic. The club at that point won five directly to an impossible 7-1 beginning with a below average program. In the wake of losing 105 games in 2019, the group finished the 2020 mission with a 31-29 record, its first winning season since 2009.
On Friday, the lasting dark horse cheered in its seventh in a row postseason arrangement triumph by gladly brandishing “Miami Bottom Feeders” T-shirts, a callback to a remark made by Ricky Bottalico in late July.
“You have to beat the bottom feeders,” the previous Philadelphia Phillies pitcher said with respect to Miami’s Opening Day win in the City of Brotherly Love.
Sixto Sanchez, Miami’s top prize in a February 2019 exchange that sent catcher J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies, made his postseason debut Sunday, striking out six Cubs players and permitting only four hits more than five shutout innings. The Dominican fireballer hit 98 to 100 miles for each hour on 42 of his 89 pitches. A Garrett Cooper solo grand slam and a Magneuris Sierra RBI single to score Lewis Brinson in the seventh inning were the main shows expected to Miami. With two outs in the lower part of the ninth, closer Brandon Kintzler, who drove the group with 12 customary season spares, struck out Jason Kipnis to send the Marlins to the NLDS without precedent for a very long time.
“This was the craziest year I’ve ever played in by far,” said Marlins right fielder and 13-year MLB veteran Matt Joyce.
Miami is one of a few amazing postseason story lines. The Minnesota Twins, wiped out by the Houston Astros on Wednesday, have lost 18 sequential postseason games. Their last season finisher triumph was Game 1 of the 2004 ALDS against the Yankees. The Cubs, who won the 2016 World Series, are presently 1-7 in their previous eight season finisher games.
On Wednesday at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, the Marlins will confront their NL East opponent and the three-time shielding division champion Braves in the NLDS. The Braves happened to acquire their own postseason achievement this week, winning a season finisher arrangement unexpectedly since 2001. Miami’s 4-6 record against Atlanta in 2020 incorporated a humiliating 29-9 drubbing on Sept. 9. The Marlins are 13-35 against the Braves in the course of the last three seasons. Miami’s arrangement triumph toward the beginning of September was their first against Atlanta since the finish of the 2017 season.
