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For one day, the Marlins were probably going to make the playoffs. On July 8, after they’d shut out the Mariners, 2-0, our Playoff Odds gave the Fish a 51.5% chance of playing in October. It was the first time they’d crested 50% since 2023.

They had just swept the A’s in West Sacramento and were about to finish sweeping the Mariners at home. Crank, crank, crank, crank, crank went the roller coaster. With the final win against Seattle, the Marlins had won 16 out of 20, tied for the best 20-game span in franchise history. The six-game winning streak that closed that span put them 10 games above .500, at 52-42. Crank, crank, crank. They were tied with the Phillies for the second and third Wild Card spots. They were three full games ahead of the Cardinals in fourth place. Not only were the Marlins going to hold onto Sandy Alcantara at the deadline, wrote Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, but they were going to be buyers for the first time in Peter Bendix’s three years at the helm, “barring” — crank — “an utter” — crank — “collapse.” Then the Playoff Odds took a stomach-churning plunge. It was the opposite of the famous Sarah Langs Whee! It was an Eeew, and it was gross indeed.

The Marlins lost their next 12 games. Last night, after coming within an eyelash of unlucky 13, they finally broke the streak with a win. They blew a three-run lead to the Phillies in the sixth inning and went into the bottom of the ninth down two. But they came back to walk it off on a bases loaded single from Griffin Conine.

The streak is over, and you could argue that few players have ever done more to earn a Gatorade bath, but we’ve still got to do a post-mortem on the most disastrous 12-game stretch in Marlins history.

No, that’s not an exaggeration. Even for a franchise that boasts just eight winning seasons in its 34-year history, a 12-game losing streak is a new low. The Marlins lost 11 straight games three times, once in 2011 and twice in 1998, but on Sunday night, when they blew a 3-1 lead in the eighth inning against the Padres to lose their 12th in a row, they entered uncharted waters. “Utter collapse” is a fairly vague concept, but I don’t think anybody could contest the idea that it includes a record-setting 12-game losing streak, especially when it has such big ramifications. The 1998 Marlins didn’t have much to lose. These Marlins are now one game under .500 and two games out of the final Wild Card spot, but they’d have to climb past four teams to get it. They look like sellers.

Alcantara, the owner of one of the team’s two guaranteed contracts, is rumored to be on the trading block, as are a handful of relievers in their 30s who are about to enter arbitration. Pete Fairbanks appears to be safe because, although he’s the holder of the team’s other guaranteed contract, it’s a one-year deal — and he’s running a 7.18 ERA and a 5.38 FIP. During the course of the streak, he posted a 10.80 ERA across four appearances, and is 0-for-1 in save opportunities. He’s faced 16 batters. Four of them have struck out, and four of them have either walked or homered. It’s not the ideal ratio.

How did things go so wrong for the Marlins over the past couple weeks? It’s not as if they were getting blown out every night. The 12-game skid included two one-run losses, five two-run losses, and four three-run losses. If you’re keeping score at home, that adds up to 11 games. In other words, although the streak lasted more than two weeks, they only lost by more than three runs once. Two of those losses were walk-offs. “It’s almost like we’re playing just good enough not to win,” said manager Clayton McCullough. He continued, “We have one tomorrow, and to come out and – again – try to break this streak and this storm cloud or these rough seas that we are navigating right now. They’ll end, and I wish I had a crystal ball to know when, but they will, and still a ton of confidence in everyone here that we’ll get this thing turned in a different direction.” I don’t think we can begrudge a man in McCullough’s position for a couple of mixed metaphors.

In a darkly comic cosmic coincidence, the close losses aren’t limited to the top of the franchise. The Triple-A Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp have also lost their last 12 games, and much like their parent club, they haven’t exactly been getting battered and deep fried. Amazingly, the Fightin’ Oxymorons lost eight of those 12 games by one run.

I don’t mean to say that the Marlins haven’t earned their 12 losses. They’ve dropped off in every department except, arguably, for starting pitching.

The fact that the starters have held serve is mighty impressive, because they’ve had to overcome some major losses in order to do so. It starts with Max Meyer, the breakout ace of the staff this season. He’s 9-1 with a 2.68 ERA and a 3.52 FIP, but he went down on July 19 with a neck strain. He made only one start during the streak proper, and he lasted just three innings. We now know that he’s been dealing with discomfort since before the All-Star break and will be shut down for at least two weeks. Janson Junk missed all of June with shin bone inflammation, and has looked lost at times. He put up a 2.82 ERA and a 3.42 FIP over his first six starts, but starting on May 9, those numbers are 7.13 and 5.37. Even so, Junk has allowed just one run in three of his last four starts, including the record-setting 12th loss on Sunday.

Alcantara hasn’t been his best, but his 4.05 ERA and 5.31 FIP over his three starts during the streak certainly aren’t terrible. Eury Pérez has been electric during the streak. Across three starts, he’s running a 2.37 ERA and a 2.58 FIP. He hasn’t allowed a single home run, but he’s got an 0-2 record. Switching abruptly to position players, speedster Esteury Ruiz has also been fantastic during the downturn, posting a 141 wRC+ across 23 plate appearances and leading the team’s position players with 0.3 WAR. Basically, if your first name starts and/or ends with “Eury,” you can excel during the worst losing streak in franchise history, but that’s about it. Ruiz, Leo Jiménez, and Joe Mack are the team’s only position players who have hit better during the streak than before it. That’s not good, because baseball teams generally need more than three hitters.

Through July 9, the Marlins ranked ninth in baseball with a team wRC+ of 104. They ranked 10th with 434 runs scored. They were a top-10 offense in baseball. During the streak, the Marlins had a team wRC+ of 66. Only the Cardinals (63) were lower, and no team scored fewer runs than Miami’s 30. No team reels off a stretch this putrid without getting unlucky, and the Marlins also had the league’s lowest BABIP at .256 over the streak. However, their .280 xwOBA was still the third-worst mark in baseball. They’ve had bad luck, but they’ve mostly been bad.

The only hitter they’ve surrendered to the injured list is Owen Caissie, but that’s a bigger loss than you may realize. Caissie has a 101 wRC+ over the entire season, but in his last 18 games before a calf strain took him down on July 8, the rookie ran a 206 wRC+ with six home runs. No one else has gotten hurt; they’ve just kind of disappeared. The Marlins had five everyday starters – more than half the lineup! – whose wRC+ during the streak was at least 50 points worse than it was before it.

This table includes the Marlins’ everyday leadoff, second, and fourth hitters. All five of these players rank in the top six in plate appearances for the team this year, and Caissie ranks eighth. During the streak, these five combined – combined! – for a wRC+ of just under 28. You’ll also note that every one of those players has a wRC+ below 50 during the streak. It’s absurd that the Marlins only got blown out once considering that more than half of their lineup simply stopped hitting altogether.

Remember May 14, when Michael Baumann took a victory lap for identifying Liam Hicks and Xavier Edwards as breakout candidates at the plate? Edwards had a wRC+ of 146 and four homers at that point. He was slugging .484. Edwards went hitless that night, and he has a wRC+ of 88 ever since. He collapsed completely the day the streak started, running a 19 wRC+. He’s lost 46 points of batting average and nearly 120 of slugging. Hicks hasn’t been bad enough to make the table above, but his wRC+ has still dropped from 121 before the streak to 88 during it. Otto Lopez was also having a huge breakout season, but he hit even worse than Edwards during the streak. However, his poor performance seems like it’s at least in part due to a finger injury suffered on July 18. Here at FanGraphs, I’d normally be expected to break down the performance of these players and tell you not just that they’re playing worse, but why. In this case, though, it’s just not practical. It’d take me a week to write up all the Marlins in free fall.

As bad as the offense was during the streak, you could still argue that the hitters weren’t the team’s biggest problem. The bullpen was Miami’s true downfall. The offense scored a major league-low 30 runs, but the relief corps gave up 30 runs on its own over that same period. All season long, the bullpen had been a strength for the Marlins, a legitimate top-five or top-10 group. During the streak, it got a little bit worse in a lot of ways, but mostly it developed a severe case of homeritis.

The Marlins blew two saves during the streak. Their ERA from the seventh inning on was 6.47. They did their best to blow it last night, too. The Marlins had a 5-2 lead over the Phillies in the sixth inning, but Cade Gibson, who had a 1.35 ERA during the streak, and Tyler Zuber, one of three(!) Marlins relievers with a 9.00 ERA during the streak, combined to cough up the lead.

Injuries played a huge part in this. The Marlins were without two of their best relievers. They lost Anthony Bender (2.62 ERA and 2.41 FIP) to a stress reaction on his shin on June 30, and John King (2.43 ERA and 4.09 FIP) to a sprained ankle from July 8 to 24. King, Bender, and Meyer are the team’s ERA leaders this season (minimum six innings pitched). That’s a good way to make sure that your bullpen blows a bunch of leads. Adding figurative insult to literal injury, Bender and King are entering arbitration next year, which makes them trade candidates. Had they been healthy enough to help avoid the streak, their jobs might now be secure.

The streak is over. No one except for Bendix can say with absolute certainty that the Marlins will sell at the deadline, or even that they’ll move Alcantara before his salary jumps up to $21 million next year. But that certainly looks most likely. Rumored trade pieces include the team’s bevy of 30-something relievers on one-year deals, Hicks, and even Meyer. The team has a young core of hitters to build around, and Bendix was always going to have to try to recreate this bullpen next year with another round of one-year deals. The Marlins’ Playoff Odds currently sit at 10.5%, and it would probably take another 16-for-20 stretch to get them to October. No team has ever made it with a 12-game losing streak on its résumé.