Miami Marlins Lose Seven Games In A Row, Historically Bad Team Sinking Quickly In The Standings

The Miami Marlins stink. Having lost seven in a row, their record is now 13-39, good for a .250 winning percentage. The last team to close the season with a .250 winning percentage was the 1962 New York Mets, who, at 40-120, finished 60-and-a-half games out of first place. To find a team that ended up with a worse winning percentage than the Marlins, you have to go back to the woeful 1935 Boston Braves (38-115, .248).

And the fact that these Marlins lost three of the games on their recent five-game road trip on walk-off hits is no consolation. Losing at the last minute is still losing, and they've not only been losing, but losing with the easiest schedule in baseball, according to CBS Sports.

The average winning percentage of Miami's opponents this season is .473, good for last out of all thirty schedules so far in baseball. Of the 52 games the Marlins have played, only 21 have come against teams with records of .500 or better. Somewhat predictably, they're a measly 3-18 when playing the league's better half. But even against the worse-than-average baseball teams (i.e. teams with winning percentages under .500), they're still 10-21.

Looking ahead into the Marlins season, things may just get worse; their opponents sport a .515 record moving forward.

One look at the team's statistics explains much of the story. The Marlins are currently dead last in all of baseball for runs (144), batting average (.223), on base percentage (.283) and slugging percentage (.323). Placido Polanco leads the team with a batting average of .236—numbers that would be good for an eighth slot on the New York Yankees' starting nine.

Combine that lousy hitting with some nearly equally lousy pitching, and it's not far fetched to imagine the Marlins with the worst winning percentage in fifty years... or more.

"Part of the learning process unfortunately is making mistakes," Manager Mike Redmond told Reuters.

"You make mistakes and you hopefully learn from them. The test for us is: Can we make mistakes and then learn from them and limit them and don't make those mistakes again?"

With a third of the season now over, the Marlins haven't learned much yet. Only time will tell if that ignorance yields historically low results.