Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.

Have you seen the Fish lately? They're flying.

We don't how you spent your weekend, but the Marlins spent theirs sweeping out the Yankees to get back to .500 for the first time in 94 days. 

It's the summer of the Marlins. Miami was 25-41 on June 11 -- a season-high 16 games under .500. They're 30-14 since. It's been more than 20 years since the Marlins have gone on a run like this.

Now they're 55-55 and suddenly on the fringes of the National League Wild Card race. The Marlins have the second-best record in baseball since the start of their run, behind only the Brewers. All-Star Kyle Stowers was just named the NL Player of the Month for July.

But can they ride this wave all the way to the playoffs? The only team ever to go from 16 games under .500 to the postseason was the 1914 Boston Braves. 

Don't count out the Fish when they're playing like this. The Marlins aren't just winning, they're winning in epic fashion, like Friday night's ludicrous 13-12, come-from-behind walk-off victory over New York.

This weekend marked the first time in team history the Marlins have swept the Yankees. Oh, and the Marlins are now the only team with an all-time winning record against the Bronx Bombers -- including their upset of the Yanks in the 2003 World Series, of course. 

The 2025 Marlins never say die, and they're now a must-watch team down the stretch. 

-- David Adler

• Astros @ Marlins (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): After all those trade rumors, here Sandy Alcantara still is, starting tonight for the Marlins, who go for a sixth straight win tonight. Can they dismantle the Astros – losers of three in a row – the way they just did the Yankees?

• Brewers @ Braves (7:15 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Going into the season, it wouldn’t have been outlandish to think one of these teams would have the best record in baseball at this point. Nobody thought that team would be the Brewers. But they have shattered every expectation; even as they lose key pieces, someone new always manages to step up. They just racked up 56 hits over a three-game series. Fifty. Six. Hits. Braves pitchers have their work cut out.

• Reds @ Cubs (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The Cubs were not exactly frontline buyers at the Trade Deadline, as many expected, but one of their additions, Michael Soroka, makes his debut tonight. He faces a Reds squad that did do some significant buying and badly needs momentum to stay in the playoff picture. They have the right man on the mound in Nick Lodolo, who is coming off an 11-strikeout start against the Dodgers his last time out.

Just two years after being drafted in the first round by the Braves, right-hander Hurston Waldrep, the club's fourth-ranked prospect, was given an assignment Sunday that absolutely no one else in the long history of the Major Leagues had ever received:

1. Rather than start at Triple-A that day, you’ll wake up at 4:45 a.m. for a nearly five-hour drive from Columbus, Ohio, to Bristol, Tenn.

2. Once there, you’ll be asked to pitch at a legendary racetrack that has been converted into a baseball diamond for just one historic MLB game that set a record with more than 90,000 tickets sold.

3.  You’ll be entering the contest already behind the eight ball, with two on and one out in the first inning and your team already down a run after rain halted the game the night before.

“It’s definitely not how you draw it up,” Waldrep said in perhaps the understatement of the year.

Fortunately for Atlanta, the 24-year-old was more than up to the task. After wiggling out of any further damage in the first, Waldrep went on to pitch five more innings, allowing just one run on three hits and two walks with four strikeouts to pick up his first Major League victory in the Braves’ 4-2 win in the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic.

“It’s been an unbelievable day,” said Waldrep, whose name fittingly reminded many of NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip. “Nothing about this game is how you draw it up or perfect. To have that along with the first career win -- I didn’t even think about it until after the game. And then it kind of all sank in.”

With five members of the Atlanta rotation currently on the 60-day injured list, they might just want Waldrep to stick around for a while longer.

-- Ed Eagle

• Jordan Bastian documented the Cubs' touching tribute on Saturday to late franchise icon Ryne Sandberg, with every one of the North Siders' blue jerseys featuring Sandberg's No. 23 on the back and Nico Hoerner donning the Hall of Famer's trademark flip-up sunglasses.

• "That's got to be the most incredible game I've ever been involved in, hands down." That's a big claim from Rockies interim manager Warren Schaeffer, but it's no hyperbole: Colorado authored an all-time comeback vs. the Pirates, erasing a 9-0 first-inning deficit to win, 17-16.

• Flamethrower Mason Miller was one of five new Padres to join the roster on Friday after the team's wild Trade Deadline spree. It was a meeting of fresh faces and long-time stalwarts melding on the fly in pursuit of their shared goal, wrote AJ Cassavell.

• What a roller-coaster ride for Colson Montgomery. Sent from Triple-A to the training complex in Arizona for a reset after a tough April, the White Sox rookie was called up on July 4 and has been on an absolute tear, hitting seven home runs in his last 11 games.

• Bill Ladson covered Pete Alonso's 250th home run, which has the slugger just two shy of tying Darryl Strawberry's Mets career record.

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