Major League Baseball’s cheapest team is also among its hottest
After a loss to the Atlanta Braves on June 21, the Miami Marlins were 30-45, in last place in the National League East and 11 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers for the third and final wild card spot in the NL.
Entering Thursday, the Marlins are 58-62, now in third place in their division and only six games out of a wild card spot with 52 games left in their season.
That in and of itself is not remarkable, as teams get hot seemingly every summer in the majors. The Milwaukee Brewers, for example, have gone 51-16 since they were three games under .500 on May 24. But Miami was expected to be terrible this season.
The Marlins won 62 games last season, and FanDuel Sportsbook set their over-under win total before the season at 63.5 games. On top of all that, Miami is by far the cheapest team in MLB, spending only $69 million on its roster in 2025, the only team under $70 million. (The Marlins’ payroll is between one-fifth and one-sixth of what the Los Angeles Dodgers are paying their team this year and only $10 million more than the Golden State Warriors will pay Stephen Curry next season in the NBA.)
Despite the team’s paltry payroll, Miami outperformed many of the league’s highest spenders during its midseason turnaround.
From June 22 through Wednesday, the Marlins went 28-17 — recording more wins in that time frame than the Dodgers, the New York Mets, the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, the four teams with the highest payrolls in MLB.
Among the reasons for Miami’s resurgence has been a better-than-expected offense. The Marlins rank sixth in the NL in batting average and seventh in both slugging and OPS.
The biggest surprise has been left fielder Kyle Stowers, who has hit .286 with 25 home runs and 72 runs batted in. Stowers ranks eighth among all major leaguers in OPS, and his 3.5 wins above replacement are higher than those of players such as Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper and Rafael Devers.
“I am proud of how well we are competing day in and day out,” Miami’s president of baseball operations, Peter Bendix, told MLB.com in late June. “We are in every game. We’re playing well against good teams, and we’re showing improvement and progress in individual players at the same time.”
Marlins manager Clayton McCullough echoed that sentiment.
“We’ve been on a steady climb, slow climb, at times, but I think we just got so hyperfocused on what we needed to do to win games,” McCullough said after the Marlins completed a three-game sweep of the Yankees on Aug. 3.
The win that day gave Miami a 55-55 record, making them the first team to go from 16 games under .500 to .500 in the same season in more than 10 years, according to MLB.com.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” rookie outfielder Jakob Marsee said after he recorded seven RBIs in a 13-4 win over the Cleveland Guardians on Wednesday.
Marsee, who was called up to the team at the beginning of the month, has been one of the Marlins’ hottest hitters since he made his MLB debut.
“It’s been more than I could ask for, and I just want to keep going and keep playing with these guys and just keep winning,” he said. “That’s all I really care about.”