Six games over .500. Four players in the All-Star Game. Even with the New York Mets for a wild-card playoff spot.
And no buzz.
Jose Fernandez is better at his job than any player in town at their job. Ichiro Suzuki is on the verge of baseball history. Even Giancarlo Stanton changed the public discussion with another home run in Sunday's 7-3 win against Cincinnati.
If there was a public discussion about him.
"We got the sweep, the Mets got swept," Stanton said as he packed for Monday's Home Run Derby in San Diego. "So we've got to keep it going."
Or, in another way, get it going? Can this team bring fans back to baseball in South Florida?
Understand: This isn't really the problem of a good-and-improving Marlins team, mind you. They're a fun story. They have the second-best winning percentage in franchise history at the All-Star break, for Jim Leyland's sake.
They've also been down their two best offensive players thus far in Dee Gordon (PED suspension) and Stanton (a two-month slump). And they're still in a good spot for mid-July.
"We're in a good spot, six games back," manager Don Mattingly said, measuring the National League East standings rather than the wild-cards' pecking order.
But the cost of this franchise being a clown act for so long keeps mounting. The toll of never changing the narrative enough off the new ballpark's public burden, Ozzie Guillen's goof, the salary dump to Toronto and the Dan Jennings managerial experiment keeps rising.
Winning like they are, you see, is nice.
But making the playoffs, like they haven't done in 13 years, is necessary to change all the quiet around them.
And how do they do that? Simple to say.
"We need a starting pitcher," a Marlins official said.
Harder to do.
"We have enough to make a move," he said.
The Marlins, a franchise known for dogs and ponies, have made good, baseball decisions ever since Mattingly came aboard. The recent trade for All-Star reliever Fernando Rodney from San Diego was the latest such move, solidifying their bullpen.
It's just that beyond Fernandez, they're a question mark every four days. On Sunday, Tom Koehler lasted four innings. Mattingly framed it as a chance for him to get some rest and use a bullpen that will have the All-Star break to rest. But ...
"They need more from me than that," Koehler said.
They need more from everyone. Fernandez has a 2.52 earned-run average, good for fifth in the league, and 11 wins. No other Marlins' starter has more than five wins. There's no measure of consistency.
Wei-Yin Chen, the expensive offseason buy, has nine quality starts. That stacks up well against Fernandez's 11 quality starts. But Chen has a 4.82 ERA, suggesting when he's struggles, he sinks fast.
The Marlins traded one of their few prospects for Rodney. Another one is 19-year-old Josh Naylor, who would slot nicely into a future at first base if they weren't so desperate to win now.
The Marlins, after all, host the All-Star Game a year from now. They'd like to build some good momentum selling the team into that. But you can't sell hope with this team considering its oddball past. You have to sell results.
That means winning. That demands finding pitching from the little on the market so far. It suggests finding teams already planning for tomorrow like Atlanta (Julio Teheran) or San Diego (Drew Pomeranz).
Stanton, whose bat has come back to life, thinks his team is ready to take the next step after the break.
"You see what teams are going to make the push and what teams are going to peel off now," he said.
Over the past few months, the Marlins have been an interesting team. But past sins have doused any interest. The question ahead is if they can win enough to make people notice.
