It’s amazing to look back and realize that South Florida has had Major League Baseball in its backyard for 30 years.

30 seasons, four ownership regimes, three memorable playoff appearances, and two championships.

One of those championships was being celebrated this past weekend in a series against the Milwaukee Brewers, managed by the very man who scored the winning run in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series.

The total combined attendance numbers on Saturday and Sunday were 24,670. To put that in context, the Marlins’ 3-1 win over the Seattle Mariners on April 30 had 29,010 fans in attendance, and that was because it was University of Miami theme night.

To further put it into context, the Tampa Bay Rays, who have spent their entire existence playing in an oversized Costco warehouse adjacent to Tampa, saw a higher attendance (20,832) on Sunday.

The 1997 team deserved better. The current team deserves better. The ballpark is 10 years old and is constantly being upgraded. The Marlins are the only team in baseball that has the players literally greet you at the gate. Jazz Chisholm is not just becoming a star but the envy of fans everywhere. Craig Mish said on his podcast that Chisholm might be a bigger star outside of Miami than in Miami and he might be right.

At some point, the issue of the fans and their constant lack of support must be brought up. No team in baseball is consistently successful without the support of fans . The fans here want the team to spend and succeed despite not going to the games and supporting that effort. Nobody wants to say it, but in South Florida, the fans are part of the problem when they should be part of the solution.

Is South Florida the only market in which the team must literally earn their fans by winning? The Florida Panthers had to win the Presidents Trophy, awarded to the team with the best regular season record, to get full crowds to their games.

Do the Marlins need to make the playoffs first for them to stop playing in empty stadiums? All the complaints one would hear about why nobody goes — the team is not competitive, the owner is cheap — are not unique to Miami, even if the fans like to think they are.

The Colorado Rockies franchise started the same year as the Marlins did. Over that time the have only been in the playoffs five times and in the World Series once. The owner is extremely unpopular and at times fans clamored for a change in ownership. Nolan Arenado, the Rockies’ biggest star since Todd Helton, demanded a trade a year after signing a big extension because of his frustration with the front office.

Do you think anyone in Denver trusts the Rockies’ front office? They signed Kris Bryant, a former MVP coming off another All-Star appearance, to a seven-year, $182 million contract. The move dumbfounded everyone. Why trade away one All-Star third baseman signaling a rebuild just to overspend for another in free agency. Rather than be excited, fans were rightfully confused.

Yet despite all that, the lowest attended game at Coors Field this season was 20,403 on a cold Monday against the Philadelphia Phillies. To get that number in Miami, the dogs need to be let in and Sebastian the Ibis needs to throw out the first pitch.

Not being good enough isn’t a worthy excuse to not show up either. The Arizona Diamondbacks are coming off their worst season ever, with practically the same roster, and the only games that saw sub-10,000 attendance were when the Marlins were in town. And this isn’t some state of the art sports complex that alone attracts fans. It’s more than twice the age of LoanDepot Park and smells like a crayon box when the roof is closed. The Diamondbacks wanted to make the county pay for upgrades and were rumored to move to Las Vegas before the Oakland Athletics. And yet they still have better attendance numbers than a Marlins team that signed the World Series MVP in Cuban slugger Jorge Soler and are trying to win.

Want to talk about a lack of trust? Who at this point trusts the Cincinnati Reds? They tore down half of their roster. Phil Castellini, the team president and son of the owner, alienated his fans before the start of the home opener. Despite all of that, in a ballpark with 5,000 more seats, the Reds have seen more home games with 20,000+ fans (5) than the Marlins (2) this season. The last place Reds have had only two games this year with less than 10,000 fans — which has been a constant in Miami since they stopped fudging the attendance numbers.

Are the fans here still holding the past tear downs against the franchise? The first time led to a second World Series in five years. The Marlins instantly improved on offense with the second fire sale. The third rebuild led them to having their most talented outfield ever, and the most recent rebuild is being played out right before your eyes. It’s time to stop holding the grudge.

Miami has the reputation of being an unworthy sports town and in baseball, it’s one that has been earned by both franchise and fans. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve seen the energy that emanates from a full crowd in Miami. The two World Series are legendary. The World Baseball Classic was always at it’s best in Miami than anywhere else. The All-Star Game didn’t disappoint either. Even 2012 had good crowds, until the team collapsed in the summer.

Marlins fans need to drop the excuses and start supporting the team at the ballpark because they won’t reach your expectations without you.

Opening Day

It’s the first of 162 games, but it feels much more special than that.

It’s the first date of a long relationship between baseball and its fans, a day when magic happens. Reality will set in the next day but for teams like the Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks, this day belonged to them. 

The Diamondbacks were staring down the barrel of a 2-0 defeat at the hands of a San Diego Padres team with playoff aspirations. Yu Darvish went six innings without a hit and manager Bob Melvin felt that the bullpen could finish the job. For two innings, he was right. 

The 35,508 fans at Chase Field who didn’t give up and left the ballpark early got their money’s worth at the end and were witnesses to a four-run ninth inning rally that was punctuated with a three-run walk-off home run by a barrel of a man named Seth Beer. It just so happened to be National Beer Day. 

Opening Day in Arizona also marked the 20th season of pitcher Oliver Perez’s career. Only one player has been in the big leagues longer than Perez and he began his final season where it all started. 

Albert Pujols last played for the St. Louis Cardinals during their surprising World Series run in 2011. After a forgettable decade-long stint with the Los Angeles Angels, Pujols returned to St. Louis to join long-time catcher Yadier Molina and ace Adam Wainwright for one last run to glory. A career that will likely end with 3,000 games with over 3,300 hits and 2,100 RBI under his belt, the last milestone for him to chase is 700 home runs. Thanks to the new era of the designated hitter in the National League, Pujols will have every opportunity to hit the 21 home runs needed to reach 700. 

While the East side of Missouri was experiencing nostalgia at its finest, the West side was welcoming a fresh new face. 

Hope has arrived in Kansas City in the form of top prospect Bobby Witt Jr. Taken with the second pick of the 2019 MLB Draft, his first career hit resulted in an RBI double that gave the Royals a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning en route to a 3-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians. 

How the rest of his rookie season goes is anyone’s guess but he and the Royals fans in attendance will never forget this game. 

The only aspect of Opening Day that is unfortunate is that it is not played by all 30 teams. The Miami Marlins had to wait until Friday fo partake in the christening of the new season. They couldn’t have picked a better place to open on the road. The Marlins make their splash towards San Francisco in the middle of the conflicting scents of sea salt and sourdough. 

The Marlins are retooled and ready to make a run at the playoffs while taking on a Giants team looking to back up an improbable 107-win season. The pitching trio of Sandy Alcantara, Pablo Lopez and Trevor Rogers have the opportunity to earn the Marlins some early credibility with a series win against the best team in baseball. 

The Marlins have been projected to finish with either a winning season or slightly below .500 in a loaded division where three teams enter with World Series aspirations. Miami goes into the new season with an above average pitching staff bolstered by a Gold Glove winning catcher in Jacob Stallings and a newly minted outfield serving as the lineup’s sorely needed power source. Avisail Garcia, Jorge Solar and Jesus Sanchez all have 30-homer potential and if Jazz Chisholm makes the leap to true stardom in his second full season, the Marlins will be able to compete with the best and capitalize in either the Mets or Phillies’ eventual late summer collapse. 

Enjoy the hope while it’s at its peak and let the games begin.

While the very concept of the All-Star Game may seem outdated, MLB clearly has the best of the four major sports.

It’s been six years since I last attended the MLB All-Star Game. It’s the type of event that takes a place like Cincinnati and turns it into a happening place. An argument could be made that the 2015 All-Star Game that featured their flamethrower of a closer mowing down three of the best hitters in the rival league and the Home Run Derby won by the hometown star was the biggest sporting event to happen in that city since the Reds winning the World Series in 1990 — the year I was born.

Most cities had plenty of time in advance to prepare for All-Star Week. Denver was tasked with putting the event together in the first week of the season and did an amazing job with it. Any market with a downtown ballpark is ideal for maximizing the event that is the All-Star Game. It would be interesting to see what Los Angeles does with it next year after missing out last year.

The crowd at Coors Field represent a comeback after a year that had us all hiding in homes and being away from each other due to a viral pandemic, a year where we all wondered when we will get to enjoy the game we love once again. It was more than a capacity crowd. Everyone was in their seats, and in the rooftop bar, and in the team store, and waiting in line for overpriced food.

It was a Coors Field sellout combined with a typical Marlins crowd. It felt like 2019 never ended.

The national anthem was a beautiful spectacle, starting with one of the stars of Hamilton singing and punctuating with a flyover and firework show.

The Colorado Rockies only had one representative in the game but they fans did get to see Nolan Arenado return to Coors Field as the starting third baseman for the National League after forcing a trade to the St. Louis Cardinals this past offseason after a divorce with the outgoing front office.

“Colorado deserves this,” Arenado said after being serenaded by the fans who knew him for ruling the hot corner for eight years.

Fireworks pierced the sky immediately after the words “play ball” were ushered by one very lucky kid.

We have been waiting for this moment for a long time.

The All-Star Game is meant to be an opportunity to see great moments from the game’s best, starting with Shohei Ohtani, who was the leadoff hitter and starting pitcher for the American League, the first ever to do so. There’s nobody in baseball who has had a better season like Ohtani, who is leading baseball in home runs with 33 while sporting a solid 3.49 ERA with 20 more strikeouts than innings pitched. A perfect inning and a couple at-bats and his day was done.

Perhaps the biggest moment of the game was Vlad Guerrero Jr. hitting a home run ball that nearly cleared the left field stands. He is one of three father-son duos to play in the All-Star Game.

“Dreams come true,” Guerrero Jr. said through a translator after the game. “Since I was a kid, I was thinking about this moment. I’ve worked all my life very hard and a lot of it is happening right now.”

The Miami Marlins, despite a season of struggles, should have had more than only one player in the game. However, Trevor Rogers was a good choice to rep the Marlins. The rookie leads all first-year players in ERA (2.31), innings (101 1/3) and strikeouts (122). He is certainly a shoo-in to win the National League Rookie of the Year.

“It’s something that we really dream of as a kid and growing up,” Rogers said, “here with the best guys in the world.”

While the game seemed like another lopsided American League victory, all anyone wants in a game like this is for the losing team to have a chance. It is even made all the more sweeter if your guy is the one to play the hero. 

That wasn’t the case for Marlins fans but if you were a Chicago Cubs fan, Kris Bryant was your guy. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning, Bryant hits a Matt Barnes fast ball to left field. It would’ve certainly been a game changer had it not been for a sliding catch by Jared Walsh to end the inning. 

In the end, a Japanese player started the game, an Australian closed it out and a Dominican won the MVP, all while representing the American League. Baseball is truly a global game. 

Pablo Lopez was a victim again.

The Marlins keep wasting great starts by their starting pitchers’ great performances. On his first start of the season, Anthony Bass allowed a three-run homer and blew the save, and on Wednesday, the Marlins just couldn’t hit.

Just like what happened with Sandy Alcantara on Tuesday, on Wednesday afternoon, it was Pablo Lopez’s turn.

Trying to avoid getting swept by the Cardinals, Miami took the field at loan Depot park with Lopez taking the mound.

The Venezuelan right-handed did what most of the Marlins rotation did for the first two series of the season: He gave Don Mattingly a quality start, only allowing two runs thanks to a two-out two-tun shot by Yadier Molina, in the top of the seventh.

Before that, Lopez only had allowed a couple of basehits. With two outs in the seventh, he walked Matt Carpenter, and then allowed a 421-feet bomb to the Puerto Rican catcher.

What should have been another game in which the Marlins starter went out with an advantage, ended up in another loss, because the Marlins just can’t score.

Corey Dickerson had the only two basehits, one single leading off the game, and a double in the bottom of the eight with two outs.

In that first episode, it was Dickerson who ran into an out, with men on first and second, with no outs and Aguilar in a 3-2 count at the plate.

The Marlins are just not doing anything right on offense.

Pablo Lopez, Sandy Alcantara with two great starts each: only one win in six games for Miami

In the first two series of the season, the Marlins starters only allowed eight earned runs in 30 innings pitched, for a 2.40 ERA.

None of them got a win.

The only Marlins win came on a offensive burst on Saturday on the third game of the series against the Rays, when they scored 12. Other than that, Miami only scored seven runs.

The bullpen was responsible for letting at least one game go (the second game of the Rays series, when Pablo Lopez started as well), but the main reason the Marlins did not win these two series is very clear: very few runs scored.

Against Tampa, a relief appearance could have been the difference. Against the Cards, it was the offense.

In the series against the Saint Louis Cardinals, Miami left 23 runners on base, scoring only three runs (one of them because of a couple of errors by left fielder Tyler O’Neill.

The bullpen is a problem, the offensive production looks like more than that.

Will Don Mattingly change something now or will he wait until the Marlins dig themselves a little bit more?

By Alejandro Villegas | @Alejandrovg32 on Twitter

Isan Diaz is battling with Jazz Chisholm to see who will be the starting second baseman for the Miami Marlins in the beginning of the 2021 season.

When Diaz came up, he was destroying minor-league pitching hitting homers here and there.

However, the result has not been the same when he had to face Major League Baseball pitching. Besides homering against Jacob DeGrom in his MLB debut in New York, there have not been too many highlights in his career.

Diaz hit .173 in 49 games in 2019, with a .250 OBP and a .307 slugging. 12 of his 31 hits that year were extrabases. He was just struggling to hit the ball.

The lefty hitter struck out 59 times in 201 plate appearances. Not a very beautiful sight.

In 2020, Diaz opted out before the Summer Training began, and later on decided he wanted to play.

That only lasted seven games, in which he only got four hits in 22 at bats. Again, his walk to strikeout ratio, was not good. Zero walks, and seven strikeouts.

In both of those short spans in the majors, Diaz had a combined WAR of -1.0. However you want to look at it, using sabermetrics or not, Diaz has not performed.

So, that’s why I think this should be the last shot for Diaz to be the starting second baseman of the Miami Marlins, a team that just went back to the playoffs for the first time in 17 years.

#Marlins notes this evening include Isan Díaz aiming for his 2019 Triple-A form, Sixto Sánchez’s schedule, Elieser Hernandez’s changeup and more. https://t.co/bIHcG4ji23

— Christina De Nicola (@CDeNicola13) March 8, 2021

The injuries, including Diaz’s, have opened the door for Jazz Chisholm, who arrived from the Diamondbacks in the Zac Gallen trade.

Isan Diaz will turn 25 on May, and failing to hit the ball better this season will probably make us think about Lewis Brinson and his constant failures to keep up with the expectations.

Both of them came to the Marlins in the Christian Yelich trade, so there’s in an extra pressure there for both the players and the team to try to get it right.

Jordan Yamamoto is already out of the team, and Monte Harrison (who turns 26 this year), seems to be on a crossroad as well.

Chisholm just made his debut last season, and wasn’t impressive during his first six games with the team in the regular season, and then in the postseason, which could be a reason to send him down to the minors, regardless of what he does in the Spring Training.

Jazz seems to be a better glove in the long run, but the offensive side is kind of even.

And this Marlins team needs offense, desperately. That could be the x factor. If none of them can hit, the position might end up in Jon Berti’s hand.

We’ll see what happens…

By Alejandro Villegas | @Alejandrovg on Twitter