Does April matter?

Or more importantly does April matter to the Marlins?  Over at Fish Bytes they looked at the historical records for the Fish and presented them thusly:

When the Marlins have enjoyed a winning April, they tended to end up with a winning season. And when they had a losing or .500 April, they usually ended up with a losing season. The Marlins have finished with winning records five times in their 16 seasons, and in four of those above-.500 seasons, they had winning Aprils (Note: Late March games in those seasons where they occur are included with April in this breakdown). The only time the Marlins didn't have a winning April yet managed to wind up with a final winning record was in 2003, when they went 14-15 the first month.

            Take a look at this year-to-year breakdown of the Marlins' April vs. Final records: 1993 (10-13, 64-98); 1994 (12-12, 51-64); 1995 (1-4, 67-76); 1996 (11-16, 80-82); 1997 (15-10, 92-70); 1998 (9-18, 54-108);1999 (6-17, 64-98); 2000 (13-13, 79-82); 2001 (10-14, 76-86); 2002 (13-13, 79-83); 2003 (14-15, 91-71); 2004 (15-8, 83-79); 2005 (14-8, 83-79);2006 (6-16, 78-84); 2007 (12-13, 71-91); 2008 (15-12, 84-77). 

Of course one could make the case that winning in April wasn't the reason that the five Marlins finished with a winning record, it was because they were actually good teams and the first month of the year had nothing to do with it.

Then again you could say an indication of a good Marlins team is it wins in April.  Or you could go into much more depth than I have time to right now.

But whatever the case, winning in April ain't a bad thing.