From left to right, Miami Marlins outfielders Victor Mesa Jr., Joey Wiemer and Jakob Marsee celebrate after defeating the New York Mets 5-1, Sunday Aug. 31, 2025 in New York.
(AP Photo/Noah K. Murray)
It happens every year and becomes more prevalent since the playoffs turned into a four-round format in 2022 because there are more meaningful games in the final weeks.
It also means one or two potential teams with losing records may succeed at messing up some type of playoff aspiration for a contender.
From the New York baseball perspective, the team messing things up might be the Marlins, a least based on the combined 56 games the Mets and Yankees played.
While the Yankees won 16 of those and the Mets won 11 times, three losses apiece were against the Marlins who are vastly improved from last year when it went 62-100 — a year after winning 84 times in the regular season to reach a wild-card series with the Phillies.
Recent evidence points to the Marlins being the kind of bugaboo for the New York teams, who face differing degrees of difficulty in their quests to become division winners.
The Yankees head into September three games out with 12 straight against the Astros, Blue Jays, Tigers and Red Sox before a season-ending 13-game stretch against teams with losing records.
The Mets enter September seven games out with a group who set team records for offense in a month but struggle to pitch on a frequent basis. Of their 26 games, 20 are against teams with winning records while three are against the pesky Marlins and three are against the careening Nationals.
Although they slipped back under .500 after briefly getting there, the Marlins went a combined 6-1 against the Yankees and Mets in August. The Yankees entered Miami on Aug. 1 riding the positive buzz from adding relievers David Bednar, Camilo Doval and Jake Bird along with utilityman Jose Caballero at the July 31 trade deadline and got outscored 22-15 in a three-game sweep by the Marlins.
The nightmarish series of events in Miami sent the Yankees from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East. The Yankees eventually dropped 6 1/2 games out on seven occasions and did not really start making a dent in their deficit until this week when they won seven straight to get within two games out before taking a 3-2 loss to the White Sox on Sunday.
The Mets won four of six games from the Marlins in the opening weeks when they went 21-10 through the end of April on the way to a 45-24 record and a 5 1/2 game lead over the Phillies in the NL East. Now the Mets are 29-40 in their past 69 games, and the Marlins outplayed them three times.
The Marlins capitalized on three errors in a 7-4 win on Thursday. After taking a 19-8 loss Friday while the Mets unveiled Jonah Tong for five inning, the Marlins scored five in the first inning, withstood two homers by Juan Soto in an 11-8 win Saturday and easily earned a 5-1 victory Sunday.
The scrappiness and spoiler mentality were evident Sunday, starting with Sandy Alcantara making the Mets appear lifeless for most of his seven innings. Alcantara was among the more prominent starters rumored to go at the deadline and it seemed r