The Florida Marlins have one win in 15 games in June, and everyone in Miami is wondering what the hell is wrong. They oughta: the franchise has put together an impressive group, but right now they look a lot like the Hindenburg — they inspire awe, endless comment and even headlines, but just when the applause is about to begin they inexplicably explode. The most recent explosion, heard all the way to Miami, happened last night, when the Marlins dropped a doubleheader in Philadelphia– after leading in the second game into the ninth with only one out to get. Oh, the humanity.

Most baseball commentators view the Fish as just too good to stay down long, waving away their recent troubles by repeating the kind of babble that the otherwise thoughtful Larry Bowa (the former shortstop is now “an on-air personality”) is known for. “They’ll be fine,” he said on MLB Network on Wednesday night. “Listen, they’re a fundamentally sound team.”

Really? Are they?

All of the notional statistics about the team seem to suggest otherwise: Leo Nunez, their celebrated closer, has blown three of his last four save opportunities, their most important pitcher (Josh Johnson) is on the D.L., Hanley Ramirez (just returned from his own stint on the disabled list) is hitting .206, their bench is thin (they recently called up Jose Lopez in an attempt to provide stability at third), celebrated righty Chris Volstad looks like he belongs in Triple-A, and off-season free agent acquisition Javier Vasquez can’t find the strike zone (and sports an atmospheric 7.09 ERA). The Marlins might be a lot of things — but “fundamentally sound” is probably not one of them.

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Martin Prado’s bases loaded home run in the bottom of the 7th inning tied the game at 5 — and the Atlanta Braves went on to win, 6-5 in ten innings against the Nationals in Atlanta. The Prado blast came against reliever Sean Burnett, but the game might have gone the other way: a check swing on a 2-2 count should have put Prado back on the bench and preserved the Nationals’ lead, but the call gave Prado a second life. The loss in Atlanta prevented the Nationals from notching a sweep of the Braves, and a victory that would have provided a positive end to a tough N.L. East road trip.

Prado’s ten pitch at bat, and the check swing, remained the topic of conversation after the game. “I think Burnett got the non-benefit — or whatever the terminology is — on a couple of check swings,” Nats’ manager Jim Riggleman said after the loss. “That irritates the heck out of me, those check swings. He’s got to end up throwing a pitch to Prado with the bases loaded, when maybe that wouldn’t have been the case.” The might-have-been loss squandered a good outing from Nats’s starter Jordan Zimmermann, who threw 6.1 solid innings. This was the kind of outing the Nats were looking for from Zimmermann, who struck out 11 and walked just one.

Once again, the Nationals seemed unable to loosen up their bats. The team registered just five hits against Atlanta’s very average Derek Lowe and a gaggle of relievers. Lowe struggled through six, but Craig Kimbrel — the goat on Thursday — gave the Braves a badly needed three-up-three-down 10th inning. Kimbrel struck out Ian Desmond, Jayson Werth and Laynce Nix to pitch a perfect frame. “That might have been the best outing he’s had all year,” Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez said after the Atlanta win. The Nationals are at home tonight, where they will face off against the Florida Marlins.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The most exciting game on Thursday night took place just up the highway in Baltimore — and featured one of the best pitchers’ duels of the 2011 campaign. The Orioles, as inconsistent as any team in baseball in the early going, pulled out a 1-0 walk-off win in the 12th inning, but the story of the night was the pitching of O’s rookie Zach Britton and Mariners’ semi-veteran Jason Vargas. Both hurlers threw the best games of their career.

Britton, a 6-3 California lefty, was the odds-on early season favorite for Rookie of the Year honors — and last night’s performance confirmed that judgment. Britton’s nine inning stint was a thing of beauty: three hits, no runs, no walks and five strikeouts. Vargas matched him pitch-for-pitch — nine innings, four hits, no runs, one walk and four strikeouts. Baltimore won the game in the extra frames on a single from just-returned shortstop J.J. Hardy. The victory notched an Orioles’ sweep of the Mariners. “We wanted to win in the ninth for Zach,” Hardy said. “Once we were down, we definitely didn’t give up. That was a big win for us. I know everybody in the lineup wants to go out and score runs for a pitcher who does that. You want to give him the win.”

The Orioles are a fascinating team to watch, the first time anything like that could be said in, oh, about ten years. Their off-season moves included a swap with Minnesota of two relievers for Hardy, the signing of on-his-last-legs Vlad Guerrero to a one year $8 million deal and former North Side Drama Queens first sacker Derek Lee (one year $7.25 million). The Orioles completed the overhaul of their infield by trading for Showboats’ third baseman Mark Reynolds and signed sometime closer Kevin Gregg (for $10 million over two years with an option). The only real head-scratcher in all of that was the trade for Reynolds, a strikeout and long-ball machine who — when he’s not stroking the ball out of the park — can’t hit worth a lick.

But the story of the O’s is their young starting pitching. In addition to Britton, the Birds of Baltimore feature Chris Tillman (don’t laugh, he turned in a long-awaited gem against the Mariners on Thursday), and righty sleeper Jake Arrieta (who’s 4-1 so far this year), to go along with Jeremy Guthrie who, on odd occasions (mostly against Minnesota), pitches like Jim Palmer. Waiting in the wings is uber youngster Brian Matusz, who’s just about to return from a torn intercostal muscle. Matusz’s return will be welcome, as it will nudge struggling wannabe Brad Bergesen back to where he belongs: as a sometime starter who has yet to learn command.

The Orioles could use another pitcher (or two), but a rotation of Guthrie, Britton, Matusz, Arrieta and Tillman not only isn’t bad, it’s damn good. If the Birds can get that done, they’ll be more than halfway to respectability — which hasn’t happened in Birdland for an awfully long time. The only thing left then, will be for Buck Showalter to tell Reynolds there’s a place for him on the pines, counsel Nick “big-hat-no-cattle” Markakis that it’s time to become the star everyone thinks he is, and find a place for Cubs castoff Felix Pie — dumped by the North Side Drama Queens because . . . because that’s what they do. But nevermind, the story (as proved last night by Britton), is that there’s finally a team worth watching in Baltimore, and it’s chock full of young arms.

There’s something in each of us that doesn’t like a showboat. Muhammad Ali had a hard time catching on back in the early ’60s for precisely this reason and it’s why I never took to Eric Byrnes — who made several ostentatious attempts to collide with walls in pursuing deep fly balls. He once flapped his arms going backwards, just to show how hard he’d hit the bricks. Puh-leeeez. But, for some reason, showboating never bothered me when it came to Ricky Henderson or Mickey Rivers. And it doesn’t bother me when it comes to Mannywood either, though his case is a little different: Manny isn’t a showboat because he plays hard all the time and in every situation, but because he doesn’t. You can think of dozens of similar examples: I couldn’t stand Pete Rose’s “Charlie Hustle” routine, but loved it when Mark Fidrych sprinted off the mound. Fidrych was believable, Rose was showing off. Then too, I would have hated it if, say, Will Smith had done backflips at shortstop, but Ozzie Smith? Not so much.

Now then for the case of Hanley Ramirez, who is not only the most talented shortstop in the N.L., but probably the best shortstop in the N.L. Ramirez is as far from a showboat as possible, but he’s been accused of “dogging it” during games — which is widely interpreted by baseball pundits as hinting that he thinks he’s more important than the guys around him. That is, he’s a kind of showboat in reverse, an Eric Byrnes at half speed, a Mannywood of Miami. Back during the third week of May, for instance, Ramirez ran at half speed to first on an infield hit and then, the next day, he booted a ball and trotted after it . . . and after it . . . and after it. Fredi Gonzalez, the then-manager of the Marlins had had enough. He benched Ramirez and told him to apologize to the team. Cameron Maybin, Wes Helms and Dan Uggla all thought that would be a good idea. Ramirez refused. The situation was apparently cleared up after two days of sullen silence, when Fredi and Hanley “cleared the air.” Five weeks later, Gonzalez was gone.

While Ramirez has always claimed that his dust up with Gonzalez had nothing to do with his firing, you have to wonder. The Marlins have been down in the standings before and stuck with their manager. And Gonzalez was universally viewed as a top baseball strategist, all-around good guy and friend of the owner. In the end it didn’t matter. Just days after the firing, Bobby Valentine (another friend of the owner) was rumored as his “sure thing” replacement — but that never panned out. Was Valentine deep-sixed because of his view of the Ramirez situation? We can just imagine Valentine’s interview with fish owner Jeff Loria. “Hey Bobby, would you have benched Ramirez for not hustling?” And Bobby’s smiling answer: “You damn right.” The owner nods, squints, fiddles with the things on his desk and then gets up from his chair. “Thanks for coming.” As for Cameron Maybin, Wes Helms and Dan Uggla — well, they’re either headed back to the minors or they’re headed out of town.

Uncomfortable as it is, and as hard as it is to swallow, Hanley Ramirez probably has this right: he’s the best player on the team and maybe even in the NL East. And therefore (therefore), the rules that apply to Maybin, Helms and Uggla shouldn’t be applied to him. In fact, that’s what he said when asked if he’d lost respect for Gonzalez after he was benched. Yeah, he said. A little bit. “We got 24 more guys out there. Hopefully they can do the same things I can do. They’re wearing the Marlins uniform.” Here’s a rough translation: all baseball players are equal, but some are more equal than others. Or perhaps this — if you want to bench someone for dogging it, do it to a player who’s hitting .225. If Casey Stengel had actually benched Mickey Mantle for showing up for a game with a hangover (or worse), who do you think would have been out the door? And don’t claim that Hanley Ramirez is no Mickey Mantle. That’s not the point. The point is that Casey would never have benched Mantle. Ever. Because Casey knew what Gonzalez didn’t: managers don’t win batting titles.

Tom Boswell and Dave Sheinin’s sobering dual articles (“everything-has-changed-now-that-we’re-in-the-playoffs”) in yesterday’s Washington Post hasn’t kept anyone from playing hunches — or favorites. We should scatter all pretensions of predicting the future by studying statistics (or counting on hot streaks) by scattering sabermetrics to the wind. And play our hunches. Or favorites. Or both. So it is that, at least before Wednesday’s trifecta, my hunch was that Redbird Chris Carpenter would prove to be unstoppable, that the Rockies would be too hot even for Cliff Lee and that the Twinkies — riding Tuesday’s Tectonic win over the sinking Kalines — would upset the empire, even in the heart of the death star.

But, since hunches are hopes, I have been humbled by October’s cheerless realities: Chris Carpenter never looked worse, Cliff Lee never looked better and the Twinkies looked like . . .  well, they looked the Twins. But while hope might be humbled, it also springs eternal, so I’ll stick by my original predictions (which I should have made yesterday, just to make them more official): the Purples are the team to beat in the N.L., the Cardinals have the best one-two pitching punch in the playoffs (Adam Wainwright — below — will win tonight), the Twins can be the surprise team of the junior circuit and (yet to be decided) ”the nation” doesn’t have a prayer against the Belinskis.  

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Good news for Nats fans! The Phish have re-upped with manager Fredi Gonzalez. Actually, what’s shocking is that Marlins’ owner Jeffrey Loria was considering dumping Gonzalez for not making the playoffs, even though Gonzalez was managing a franchise with the lowest payroll in baseball . . . Even better news (and this time, seriously) – is that Mets G.M. Omar Minaya still has his job! though a source on the team says that were it not for his three year extension (signed in October 2008) he wouldn’t. Minaya is on a short string (or noose, as it were) and that, if he falls on his face, he’ll be gone. Clearly, patience is running out in New York, and most particularly among its most avid fans. Our buddy-buds at NL East Chatter are running a whole chatter on “What Happens to Omar Now?” The answer is: nothing. At least not yet . . . 73 percent of those responding to an NL East Chatter poll answer the question as follows: “we are having the same damn discussion next year” . . .

Connor Tapp (the voice at Braves Baseball Blog) has some interesting things to say about what the Tomahawks should do in the off-season. He doesn’t mince words, saying that if Frank Wren resigns Garret Anderson “I might become a Mets fan.” That seems awfully dramatic, but I know what he means: if Mike Rizzo resigns Austin Kearns I might become a Braves fan. We here at CFG note that there is a hole in Tapp’s entries between August 25 and October 6: corresponding (very roughly) to those dates during which which our beloved Nats swept the Braves in three. It is onto such thin reeds that drowning men (and fans of last place baseball teams) grasp . . . Meanwhile, our friends at Phillies Phandom are having a field day (so to speak). The Phuzzies should be confident: they haven’t lost a home playoff game in two seasons.