There was a lot of talk, much of it garbled by anxious Cubs fans talking around their fingernails, that the Marlins presented a particularly scary matchup because of the young pitchers leading their rotation. Some of that may also have been the two teams’ respective histories, and I don’t just mean the nauseating tropes that are sure to get plenty of airtime in the upcoming national broadcasts.
Like some sort of sporadic minor plague, the Marlins rise from obscurity once in a while to make the postseason and win the whole damn thing. This is only their third playoff appearance in franchise history and they’ve got two of Rob Manfred’s pieces of metal from their previous trips.