As has been mentioned ad nauseam by baseball pundits, the Marlins did not enter this season with any aspirations to be good. Quite the contrary—they assembled a roster specifically to be not good. And from 35,000 feet, it appears that everything is going according to plan (stats updated entering May 2):
Mediocre MLB teams are incentivized to be terrible. Tanking “earns” the franchise a desirable draft position the following June. The Marlins determined that access to elite amateurs is an important step in their long-term process, which is why they didn’t mind unloading Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich and Dee Gordon during the offseason.