How a meeting with Don Mattingly in April helped Jose Urena fix early-season issues

It didn’t take long in the 2019 season for the Miami Marlins to sense something was wrong with Jose Urena. The starting pitcher was coming off a breakthrough 2018 season — particularly, a breakthrough final month of the 2018 season — and his follow-up was quickly spiraling. Urena couldn’t go more than five innings in any of his first three starts this year and allowed four runs in each of them. Three starts was enough for Don Mattingly to call the right-handed pitcher in for a meeting.

“We sat down and talked about some different things we felt like he could do better, and do differently, made some small changes — nothing big with him — but he’s taken to it,” Mattingly said. “Really, since then, he’s pitched really good.”

The right-handed pitcher finished his third start against the Cincinnati Reds with a 9.22. After tossing seven strong innings in a 3-2 win against the Washington Nationals on Sunday, Urena’s ERA is all the way down to 4.11. The adjustments he made then have worked and his turnaround across the last six weeks culminated with perhaps his best outing of the season on Memorial Day at Nationals Park.

Urena’s challenge was lofty. The Marlins (17-34) were finishing a seven-game road trip with a chance to go back to Miami with a winning record. Washington (22-32) had a chance to finish off a four-game sweep of the Marlins. Urena (3-6) had to best both the Nationals’ potent lineup and Max Scherzer, who finished as the runner-up for the National League Cy Young Award in 2018, and he did. The 27-year-old starter needed only 80 pitches to get through seven innings in Washington. He struck out four batters, walked only one and allowed just four hits. The two runs he allowed both came in a shaky fifth inning. Otherwise, Urena kept the Nationals at bay.

“We were thinking how I was last year, how I finished,” Urena said. “We were working on it and put it together, and you see the results.”

Urena’s final month of 2018 marked the best stretch of his career. The righty started five times and won all five with a 1.20 ERA, a .183 opposing batting average, 20 strikeouts and nine walks in 30 innings.

Urena has now made eight starts since his meeting with Mattingly and — other than one dud against the Atlanta Braves on May 3 — he hasn’t allowed more than two earned runs in a start since.

In his latest win, he pounded Washington with sinkers. He threw his signature pitch 57 times to carve through he Nationals’ lineup even though he only threw 48 strikes and fell behind a few times too often early in the game. Washington eventually tagged him for a couple runs in the fifth after a leadoff walk before Urena cruised through consecutive 1-2-3 innings to end his day. The Nationals don’t chase often, so once Urena threw them sinkers in the zone, he was getting soft contact.

“Trusting his stuff,” Mattingly said is the biggest adjustment. “That’s a tough lineup and you just can’t play behind in the count all the time with them, they’ll end up hurting you, so I thought he threw strikes, made them swing the bat, mixed enough, got some balls to the other side of the plate.”

By the time Urena left, the Marlins were already into Washington’s bullpen. Miami knocked Scherzer around for seven hits, so the starting pitcher crossed the 100-pitch threshold after six innings. The Nationals’ MLB-worst bullpen took over in the top of the seventh with a 2-1 lead. The Marlins’ rally could finally begin.

Washington’s first option was Tanner Rainey for the top of the seventh and immediately the crowd of 21,048 grew antsy. The relief pitcher issued a leadoff walk to infielder Miguel Rojas and pitching coach Paul Menhart rushed out to the mound for a meeting.

After an error by slugger Matt Adams and a lineout by outfielder Curtis Granderson, outfielder Harold Ramirez hit an RBI fielder’s choice to let Rojas tie the game at 2-2 with an unearned run. Next up: Kyle Barraclough.

The former Miami relief pitcher quickly got one out, then coughed up a single to second baseman Starlin Castro. With a runner on first and one out, the Nationals made another gaffe.

Corner infielder Martin Prado slapped a grounder to the shortstop against Barraclough (1-2) and Trea Turner sailed his throw over Adams’ head at first base. Rojas delivered a sacrifice fly two batters later for another unearned run. Pitchers Nick Anderson, Adam Conley and Sergio Romo, who notched his 10th save, could close out a win.

“We know their weakness is the bullpen,” Rojas said. “We were trying to get in their bullpen as soon as possible.”

This story was originally published May 27, 2019 at 4:11 PM.