ESPN: Gammons: It’s not all doom and gloom in South Florida

Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old, Never Go Insider Again.

The Marlins are a team in transition that hit 207 homers in a pitchers’ park last season, second only to the Phillies. They had a modest plus-3 run differential. Their two best pitchers, Ricky Nolasco and Josh Johnson, were a combined 22-9, and Chris Volstad was 6-4 with a 2.88 ERA in 14 starts. They see high ceilings for pitchers Andrew Miller and Anibal Sanchez (10-3 in 2006), with Sean West hot on the trail. Down the stretch last season, Nolasco, Johnson and Volstad combined to go 7-3 in September, and The Phish split their last dozen games with the Phillies and Mets, who were fighting to make the playoffs.

Granted, there are nights when you watch the Marlins’ home games and it looks as if it is a family-only crowd. But their rebirth has been overlooked (much like Hanley Ramirez’s season was ignored in the MVP voting), as everything these days in the NL East is ignored other than the drama of the Mets. For two years in a row, the storyline of the division has been the “collapse” of the Mets, with little credit given to the intrepid Phillies, who never stopped fighting and who this year earned their first championship in 28 years. Things have gone wrong for the Mets, but they did not play in a vacuum, and for two straight years the Phillies stomped their way to the division title, this year the World Series.