3 Reasons the Marlins Lost the Series to the Nationals

Apr 16, 2014; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Marlins fan Matt Kaster cheers on during the eighth inning of a game between the Washington Nationals and the Miami Marlins at Marlins Ballpark. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

On Wednesday night, the Marlins lost to the Washington Nationals by a score of 6-3. This resulted in their first home series loss on the year. The first two games were blow-outs in which the Nats defeated the Marlins 9-2 and the Marlins rocked Washington by a score of 11-2. These are the three main reasons that the Marlins lost the series.

Marlins reliever Mike Dunn struggled Wednesday, surrendering 2 earned runs and not acquiring an out. Mandatory Credit: Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Bullpen Woes:

It isn’t that the Marlins bullpen is all that bad, Out of the 3 to 4 innings that they will throw in a night, they generally get the job done, with maybe one bad inning. The issue is that the bad inning comes at a terrible time and Miami is unable to recover from it.

Case in point: The Marlins opening game of the series saw Brad Hand really struggle, which is going to happen from time to time. After falling behind 5-1 in the third inning, Miami got a boost from Garrett Jones‘ first home run of the season to cut the lead to three runs. You could feel the momentum start to shift. The next half of the inning is when the game was put out of reach courtesy of 4 Nationals runs allowed by Kevin Slowey (who had pitched well up until that point).

Or you can take a look at the rubber game of the series last night. After a 3-run home run by Derek Dietrich and a 3-run home run by Jayson Werth, it was an even game going into the 7th inning. Mike Dunn (who has been alarmingly bad lately) promptly gives up a go-ahead home run to Zach Walters (who?!?!) on the second pitch of the inning, and it was a horrible pitch. The Nationals would go on to score 3 more runs that inning.

All told, Miami’s bullpen gave up 9 runs in 6 innings pitched during the series. That is just not going to win ball games.

Stanton struck out at an inopportune time, stranding Marcell Ozuna on third base. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Momentum: 

I know that statisticians would cringe at my mention of the “M” word. It is virtually impossible to quantify, yet there are times that you just know when something good or bad is about to happen. Case in point: Look at the fifth inning last night. After a strike out of Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna stayed hot with a double into left field. That was followed up by a throwing error on an attempted pick-off of Ozuna, allowing him to advance to third base with one out and the three and four hitters for the Marlins coming to the plate.

All Giancarlo Stanton has to do is hit a fly ball and we have a 4 run lead, and are in a much better position to win the game. Instead Stanton strikes out on a slider that wasn’t even close.

No problem, we have our cleanup hitter coming to the plate surely he can…ohhh wait, he just swung at the first pitch and popped it up for the third out. It was so deflating that I had a terrible feeling about what was to come. That momentum certainly led to the next reason.

Saltalamacchia drops a foul ball during a disastrous sixth inning against the Washington Nationals. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Untimely Mistakes:

The sixth inning was definitely bad, mostly because of Jarrod Saltalamacchia. While I loved the way he stood up to Ian Desmond on Tuesday when Desmond overreacted to an inside pitch by Tom Koehler, Wednesday was a bit of a different story.

After a double down the right field line off the end of the bat by Jose Lobaton, pitcher Tanner Roark was looking to sacrifice the runner to third on a bunt. What transpired next was a huge part of the why the Marlins lost the series.

The bunt was a poor one and it trickled out just in front of home plate. Salty picked up and quickly saw that he had a play at third base to catch the slow running Lobaton. He tried to rush the throw and threw it in the dirt that Casey McGehee was fortunate to even catch. Lobaton was safe and the Marlins still had nobody out.

Here is the issue, GET THE SURE OUT! Unless that play is a force out (it wasn’t) making that throw allows for a host of things to go wrong. When the other team is trying to give you outs, YOU TAKE THEM. So what if Lobaton is standing on third base. Miami still has a 3-0 lead with one out and Jose Fernandez on the mound. Neither Nate McLouth or Anthony Rendon had done anything up until that point against Fernandez, but you could just feel bad things were coming when that happened.

Salty would go on to make another error on a foul pop-up that bounced in his mitt and popped right out during the McLouth at-bat. It didn’t directly cost the Marlins as they would retire McLouth, however it was another mistake that compounded the feeling that the Nationals were in for a big inning.

Needless to say, Fernandez pitched masterfully to both McLouth and Rendon, retiring them to get two outs. That should have been enough to get out of the inning. Instead, Fish killer Jayson Werth got to come up to bat and drilled a fastball over the right field fence for a game-tying home run. The moral of the story is that if the other team gives you outs with Jose Fernandez on the mound, you take them.