Last night’s loss to the Atlanta Braves leaves the Florida Marlins’ playoff outlook very bleak. Over the course of the season Marlins’ fans have blamed ownership, the bullpen, or the manager for the Marlins struggles at different points in the season. The past three days however must leave all fans questioning the team itself, the 25 men who call themselves professional baseball players.

Last night the Marlins were bested by an Atlanta Braves pitcher that hadn’t won in his last seven outings, and were finally put away by a three run homer from a player who hadn’t gone deep since August 9th and had 0 hits in his last 15 at bats. The Marlins act as though they don’t care if they get into the playoffs. They return to Miami tonight after a 9 game road trip in which they had the luxury of playing the slumping San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves. Instead of a glorious return, they limp home after losing 2 of 3 to each of those squads and find themselves 6 games back of 1st place with the Mets coming to town tonight.

It would be easy to say Fredi Gonzalez isn’t demanding enough of his players, or hard enough on them. It would be convenient to blame the ownership for not spending more. But the bottom line is, these men are PROFESSIONALS. OK, so they aren’t paid on the level of Alex Rodriguez and so many other superstars, but they are paid more than you or I will ever see to play a GAME! If they want to make it into the playoffs, they should man up and show up to the park everyday. When they face, lets be honest here, terrible teams like Atlanta or Washington, anything but a sweep is unacceptable. It does you no good to get up for only the Phillies and Mets, because if you can’t beat the teams you should you won’t even be in contention to begin with.

As always though, I refuse to count them out. Yes, the Marlins are 6 games out of 1st and have 28 games to play. They get the New York Mets in Miami this weekend, they won’t have to face Johan Santana, and the Mets rotation and bullpen outside of Santana and closer Billy Wagner are awful. Now is the time, time to step up and prove you are men and professionals and get yourselves back in the race. If not, well then maybe we don’t need any of you back next year if you can’t step up when needed.