It is hard to accept, but the Marlins 2008 season is finally over. A season that started with a lot of promise saw the Fish lead the NL East throughout April and May. The team hung in the pennant race throughout June and July. In the end, the Marlins faded down the stretch and though they played themselves back into the fight in early September, they were done realistically after their August collapse. Now it is left to us to determine what went right and what went wrong for the Marlins this season, and it boils down to 8 reasons.

First off, what went right for the Marlins this season? Well, the Marlins made the following positive steps forward in 2008:

1. The most visible improvement was the Marlins record, 84-77, a 13 win improvement over last season. This season was the Marlins 1st winning season since 2005 and their record of 84-77 is the 3rd best finish in team history. The only better records belonged to the 1997 World Series team and 2003 World Series team.

2. Perhaps the biggest positive this season was the fact that the Marlins were never below .500 after the 3rd game of the season when they were 1-2. They didn’t even fall to .500 again until August.

3. The Marlins were tough in the clutch, never making it too easy for their opponents. They finished 24-19 in 1 run games and 9-5 in extra innings games. The Fish also had 42 comeback victories and 11 walk off wins.

4. Florida pitching was vastly improved this year. The team finished 30th (dead last) in ERA last season, but this season finished 14th in MLB.

For all the positives though, the Marlins still had weak spots that will need to be addressed to transform this team into a playoff team next year. Here are 4 things that will need to be improved:

1. The team’s defense was atrocious at times this season. Hanley Ramirez, Jorge Cantu, and Mike Jacobs were among the worst in MLB at fielding their position. The team as a whole was 2nd to last in fielding percentage.

2. This team couldn’t get over hump. On July 20th the Fish were within 1/2 game of the NL East lead, but after falling out of the race for Manny Ramirez, the Marlins bats went cold in August and the Fish played themselves out of the playoff race with a terrible month of August.

3. The Marlins blew too many late leads. Even though Kevin Gregg was removed as closer in favor of Matt Lindstrom, the damage had been done. Gregg tied for the lead in the majors with 9 blown saves on the season, to go with 8 losses he picked up as well. Lindstrom took over at the end of the season and was an improvement, time will tell though if he can be durable throughout an entire season as closer.

4. Marlins batters created as much wind in South Florida as the hurricane season did. The Fish were 1st in MLB as a team with 1,371 Ks, 100 Ks higher than the next closest team. 6 Marlins’ batters finished with more than 100Ks each and a 7th was on his way were it not for 2 months out of the game.

Perhaps an extra weakness the team has is ownership. Jeffrey Loria should be ashamed of his cheapness, his payroll of just over $20 million was far and away the lowest in baseball. Alex Rodriguez makes in one season what the whole Marlins team makes in a year. Loria ,however, now has his coveted new stadium and promised to spend more money when a stadium was secured for the Marlins. Well mission accomplished, now pony up the dough Loria!

No team in baseball is ever perfect and every team has weaknesses that can be exploited. The true measure of a good team however is their ability to minimize their weakness and take advantage of their strengths. In the end many good things happened to the Marlins this season, good record, strong performance, and hey, we’ve got a new stadium coming our way in 2011. The future is bright for this team, stick around to see what happens!