The Marlins Just Pulled Off the Wildest Streak-Buster in 20 Years

The Marlins Just Pulled Off the Wildest Streak-Buster in 20 Years The Miami Marlins had lost 12 straight games, the longest skid in franchise history, and they were three outs away from lucky number 13. Then the ninth inning happened. Miami scored three runs off one of baseball's best closers and walked off the Phillies 8-7 on Monday night at loanDepot park. First place in the drama standings, locked up. How the Ninth Inning Unfolded Philadelphia handed a 7-5 lead to Jhoan Duran, who had blown exactly one save in 25 chances all season. Jakob Marsee singled. Otto Lopez singled. Kyle Stowers got hit by a pitch. Bases loaded, nobody out, and suddenly the whole building believed. Heriberto Hernandez, who had already taken Zack Wheeler deep in the first inning for his team-leading 15th homer, ripped a game-tying single up the middle. Two batters later, Griffin Conine lined a single past Bryson Stott's glove for the first walk-off hit of his career. The history here is genuinely rare. Miami became the first team since the 2002 Devil Rays to snap a losing streak of 12 or more games after trailing by two-plus runs entering the ninth. They're also the first team to end a 12-plus game skid with a walk-off since the 2006 Pirates. When a slumping team finally breaks through, it usually happens quietly. This one happened in the loudest way possible. Wheeler Got Rocked Too The streak-buster came against the worst possible matchup on paper. Zack Wheeler entered the night 5-0 with a 2.87 ERA over his last 10 starts against Miami, and the Marlins had scored one run in 12 innings against him this season. Monday, they chased him after three innings, his shortest start in four years, and tagged him for five runs, his most since May 2025. Bryce Harper's two-run shot in the first gave Philly an early lead, but Miami answered with five straight runs and never stopped swinging. Seven Marlins recorded a hit, and six of them had multi-hit nights. That's a massive shift from what this offense looked like during the streak. Miami hit .208 with a .607 OPS over those 12 losses and scored just 30 total runs, about 2.5 per game. All but one of those losses came by three runs or fewer, which tells you the pitching kept them in games while the bats disappeared. The Betting Angle Before the collapse, the Marlins were a legitimate story at 52-42, three games back of Atlanta in the NL East and holding the third NL wild card. Twelve losses later, their playoff odds cratered and their prices moved accordingly. Now the question for bettors is simple: was the streak a dead-cat spiral or a slump from a team that's better than it showed? The underlying profile says slump. Close losses, functional pitching, and an offense that went cold all at once tend to normalize. Manager Clayton McCullough joked before the game that he felt like Odysseus, away from home for 10 years and unsure which baseball god he angered. Conine put it more bluntly after the win: "Now, we're on a winning streak. Now, we want more of it." Miami hosts Philadelphia again Tuesday night, and the market still treats the Marlins like a broken team. If the bats stay warm, there could be short-term value in fading that perception, though one win never guarantees a turnaround. SBA takeaway: Long losing streaks distort betting lines faster than they distort actual talent. The Marlins' underlying numbers during the skid were closer to unlucky than terrible, and books will be slow to re-price them. Watch this series closely before the market catches up. --- Related Reading - Deadline Week Is Here: The Mead Trade, Skubal to the Rays Buzz, and a Marlins Collapse - Skubal, Mason Miller, and the Trade Deadline Moves That Will Shake the Futures Market - Weekly Recap: AI Picks Went 50-80 — Jul 20 – Jul 26, 2026