How does a team survive when the pitching is awful but the hitting is pretty impressive? By the skin of their teeth.
I swear, the Marlins lineup is one of the tighter ones in the bigs-Marcell Ozuna, Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, JT Realmuto, Martin Prado, Dee Gordon and Adeiny Hechavarria are all playing beautifully, and Ozuna and Stanton are hitting a nice amount of home runs. With Wei-Yin Chen, Edinson Volquez and Jeff Locke ailing, the pitching staff can only do so much, though. Dan Straily's being pressured into repeating his 2016 success, and it's not working. Adam Conley and Tom Koelher are trying, but can't always be amazing. Hell, even AJ Ramos is having a tough time of it this year.
It's hard for me to visualize this team succeeding without knowing that there's more pitching, more successful pitching, hiding somewhere in this roster. Because that's what's gonna stop the Marlins from being great. They have a better lineup than the Mets, who are ahead of them in the standings, but their lack of pitching is keeping them behind the Mets. They can be one of the more important teams this season if they get some stuff together in that one category.
Coming Tomorrow: Ten years after debuting, one of the stronger players in the bigs.
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