After an impressive performance last week, the Miami Marlins won another series! This time against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It started with a 5-1 win on Friday, continued with a 3-2 win on Saturday and finally ended with a 5-0 loss on Sunday. Considering Arizona is currently leading their division, this was a pretty impressive series win. It's also nice to see this with all of the bad news lately. Let's take a look at what happened...
The Miami Marlins won another big series!
It all started with the aforementioned 5-1 win in the series opener. The big story here was Trevor Rogers. The starting pitcher has largely struggled since last season (though injuries played a big part.) Trevor went for 6 innings and gave up 5 hits, a run and a walk in a dominant effort. He added 7 strikeouts and didn't give up any home runs for once. This is very promising for the Miami Marlins, as if he's back on track, than he's a legit top of the rotation starter.
LF Bryan De La Cruz went 3-4 in the series opener, 1-4 in the second game and 1-3 in the final game. It may not seem too impressive, but he keeps climbing up in the batting order, and has raised his batting average for the season to .304. De La Cruz started the season slowly, but is finally on pace to match his second half success from last season. I have high hopes for him this season, and expect him to end up in the middle of the batting order by October.
Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara was the disappointment of the series (shockingly). The reigning Cy Young winner went for 6 innings in the series finale, and gave up 4 earned runs, a home run and 7 hits. He did have 9 strikeouts and his FIP and xFIP for the game were both well below 3.00. Sandy also still has his elite 98.0 mph fastball. Sandy's 5.84 ERA is bad, but his 3.49 FIP hints at better results down the line.
So what did we learn? We learned that Trevor Rogers is not "done" and that the 2021 version is still there. We can also hope for big things from Bryan De La Cruz and expect a rebound from Sandy Alcantara.