David Huzzard: The Marlins are now the Nats' biggest threat

All this time, we, Nats fans, have been focused on the Mets, and after a horrific road trip by the Nationals and a sweep of New York, there is a new contender. It would have been nice if the sweep of the Mets reset the terrible occurrence of the road trip, but it instead gave rise to a new threat: the Miami Marlins.

There is only a half-game difference between the Marlins and Mets in the standings, but the Fish are in second when they weren't expected to even be contending for the division. Remember back in the beginning of the season when everyone was saying the Nats' record didn't count because they only played bad teams? One of those teams was the Marlins and now they are the team chasing down the Nats. It is important to know your enemy, so let's look at how the Marlins are winning games.

Whenever a team is a surprise team, it is because there are surprise players, and the Marlins have a whole bunch. First off, Giancarlo Stanton is underperforming badly and Dee Gordon is suspended, so they aren't being very helpful at this point in time. Giancarlo could breakout at any moment. Superstars don't stay pumpkins for an entire baseball season. The Marlins are a surprise team because Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich, J.T. Realmuto, Derek Dietrich and Justin Bour are all having breakout seasons. This is a bit like the 2012 Nats but with Ian Desmond and Michael Morse being two players instead of five.

The ironic thing here is that the Marlins' best position player, Ozuna, is a player they couldn't stand last season. Baseball history is full of the best moves being the ones not made. Think of how lucky the Nats were to dodge the Brandon Phillips bullet and end up with Daniel Murphy. The Marlins are much the same with Ozuna. They held onto him instead of trading him for peanuts and are now being rewarded with his breakout season.

On the pitching side, Jose Fernandez is once again unstoppable. Other than that, the starting pitching is nothing special. The bullpen is the story of three men having great seasons, with Kyle Barraclough having a season as great as his name with a 2.93 ERA and 2.54 FIP to set up A.J. Ramos and his impressive 1.74 ERA and 2.64 FIP. Then there is David Phelps, who has pitched 42 innings in 38 appearances with a 2.36 ERA. The Marlins have obvious flaws when it comes to the pitching side of the game. Miss Fernandez and the Marlins are going to have to score some runs to win, but fall behind early and that bullpen with Phelps, Barraclough and Ramos can make it a short game.

The Marlins are a better team than people expected because they have several young players performing better than expected. If they can keep it up until Stanton gets back to being Stanton or the Marlins make a trade for some starting pitching, then the Nats are going to have a fight on their hands. The Nats have their own flaws to fix this trade deadline and inaction like 2015 could prove to be just as catastrophic if the Marlins are able to pull off the pitching equivalent of the Yoenis Cespedes trade. The Nats may have a 5 1/2-game lead, but the seven-game losing streak and terrible road trip put the Marlins in this fight, and now the Nats have July to ready themselves for the fight for the National League East crown.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.