The Miami Marlins are thin on payroll and pitching, but that hasn\u2019t prevented them from becoming baseball\u2019s hottest team.<\/p>\n
After Sunday\u2019s 2-1 win against the San Francisco Giants at loanDepot park, the Marlins are 14-4 this month, boasting the best record in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
When asked if this is the best baseball he has seen the team play since taking over as manager ahead of the 2025 season, Clayton McCullough didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at how we\u2019re producing offensively, we\u2019re doing it in a lot of different ways. Our bat quality up and down the lineup has been good. Also our base-running. When you have so many players that are capable of getting an extra 90 feet,\u201d McCullough said \u201cAnd anybody that\u2019s come out of our pen has just done a really phenomenal job.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a team operating with baseball\u2019s leanest payroll and a pitching staff that has dealt with one blow after another, Miami\u2019s recent surge has been less about overpowering teams than doing the little things better than them.<\/p>\n
The Marlins entered Sunday with more stolen bases than any team in baseball, and their bullpen has the fourth-lowest ERA in the MLB according to Fangraphs, just a few examples of them winning at the margins.<\/p>\n
Ryan Gusto earned his fourth start of the season after originally being called up from Triple A Jacksonville as a bullpen arm, showing gradual progress by pitching 4 \u2153 innings while giving up three hits and one run.<\/p>\n
After a rough start to the season, the 27-year-old pitcher has given up just three hits in two out of his past three outings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus is on trying to use my whole arsenal of pitches. That\u2019s different from how I was pitching earlier this year for sure,\u201d Gusto said after the game. \u201cBeing aware of the counts I\u2019m going into and the scouting reports. Getting used to my personal queues on how to execute every pitch.<\/p>\n
Four more pitchers, Lake Bachar, John King, Calvin Faucher and Michael Petersen, took the mound, giving up just one hit while shutting out a lineup featuring two of the league\u2019s top hitters in Jung Hoo Lee, who entered the day with a .331 batting average, and Luis Arraez, who entered at .320.<\/p>\n
Even on a day when 2025 Nationa League strikeout leader Logan Webb threw his first complete game of the season, the Marlins managed to squeeze out five hits and two runs over eight innings. Kyle Stowers opened the scoring with a 426-foot homer in the second, and Otto L\u00f3pez drove him in from first with a go-ahead double in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Hottest team in baseball<\/p>\n
The Marlins\u2019 team ERA this month sits at 3.18, the lowest in MLB, while their lineup has also ranked inside the top 10 in on-base percentage, according to FanGraphs.<\/p>\n
Now sitting at 40-38, Miami is just half a game behind the San Diego Padres for the National League\u2019s final wild card spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re certainly riding a good stretch right now. We\u2019re playing at a high level, guys are stepping up,\u201d McCullough said. That does a lot for the camaraderie, I think we\u2019re as close and tight as we\u2019ve been all year. We\u2019ve just had to find a way to step up. It goes back to being incredibly unselfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even during this encouraging stretch, the Marlins still have help on the way, with injured starting pitchers Eury P\u00e9rez and Janson Junk continuing to ramp up their returns.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9rez recently made a rehab start with Triple A Jacksonville, giving up three hits and one run over 3 \u2154 innings while striking out five. McCullough acknowledged the possibility that P\u00e9rez could return to Miami this week.<\/p>\n
Junk might not be as far along in the process, but he recently threw a pitch-design session at the Marlins\u2019 training complex in Jupiter and is expected to throw live batting practice this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Marlins are thin on payroll and pitching, but that hasn\u2019t prevented them from becoming baseball\u2019s hottest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-315164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}