The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Marlins Recap: Miami Marlins vs Washington Nationals 7/14/13

Today is the last game before the All Star game. How did the Marlins end the first half of the season? Welcome to the final edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Marlins Recap for the first half of the baseball season. Let’s get into the quick recap– The Good: we take the series 2-1; The Bad: we lost 5-2; The Ugly: Extra innings. So with that all said, let’s see how the Marlins ended the first half of the season.

The Good:

The Marlins take the series from the Nationals 2 games to 1; however that means that the Marlins had to lose 1 and that 1 was this game. Another good note was that in the 4^th Giancarlo Stanton had two amazing plays on defense. The first was when he threw out Jayson Werth at second from the outfield on his (Giancarlo’s) knees, and he also threw out Ian Desmond at home.

Jul 14, 2013; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Marlins shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria (3) tags out Washington Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche (25) on a throw from right fielder Giancarlo Stanton (not pictured) at Marlins Park. Mandatory Credit: Robert Mayer-USA TODAY Sports

The Bad:

The Marlins lost this game 5-2, which ends the first half with a loss. The Marlins had several chances to win this game. Even though the Marlins took a 2-1 lead in the 4^th off of a 2 run shot from Derek Dietrich, they had other opportunities to score more runs. In the 2^nd Dietrich hit a double that put runners at 2^nd and 3^rd but the play was called back because the Home Plate Ump decided that the 1^st Base Ump didn’t call it right and the hit was actually foul. With the count now 2-2 Dietrich struck out. In the 3^rd Stanton hit a single that would have loaded the bases, but Placido Polanco didn’t pick up his 3^rd base coach and got caught in a rundown which turned into Jeff Mathis getting tagged out at home. The missed opportunities today were our down fall, but it got Ugly in the extra innings.

The Ugly:

The 10^th inning was not pretty by any means. With 2 outs and a runner on first Steve Cishek gave up a double to Denard Span that scored Desmond. This was then followed by a single by Wilson Ramos that scored Span. In comes Dan Jennings that gave up a double to Chad Tracy that scored Ramos. 3 runs on a 2 out rally that give the Nationals the win. What an Ugly inning.

The bright side to all of this is that the Marlins are 22-17 since May 31. If the Marlins keep this up the second half of the season will look a lot better than the first half. The Marlins are a good young team who are starting to adjust to playing in the majors. I can’t wait until Friday to kick off the second half. Till then as always… Let’s Go Marlins!