3 overreactions from the Miami Marlins getting swept by Arizona

#1: “Pablo Lopez is not that good after all”

I’ve seen this one mentioned on Twitter quite a bit after the Miami Marlins lost the first game of the series, and it bothered me quite a bit. Pablo Lopez is an elite starting pitcher and has been phenomenal this season. He has a 1.29 ERA/2.68 FIP at the moment. Is that not a mark of a potential Cy Young contender?! How many aces never have bad starts?!

It’s tough to admit as a fan, but aces aren’t always going to be great. There are going to be times when an ace has a bad day. Maybe there’s an ache or pain, maybe the weather affects him badly… There are many different things that can affect a pitcher’s ability on any one particular day. It’s safe to say that Pablo is not a bad pitcher.

So how bad was his performance in this one game? Well, he gave up 4 runs (3 earned) in 4.2 innings. That’s pretty bad, but he also had 7 strikeouts and one of those runs was a home run. Home runs can happen because of one bad pitch, or even a gust of air that just randomly happened and pushed the ball over the fence. Pablo got unlucky but this performance wasn’t indicative of his true talent level.

The Fish actually scored the 4 tying runs in the 7’th inning, but unfortunately the Arizona Diamondbacks scored one more prior to that at the top of the inning, and that run ended up deciding the result of the whole ballgame. Pablo Lopez had a bad game and then bad luck crept in, Pablo is still an ace and it’s better to just move on and forget this particular outing.