With a rough Rogers outing and no clutch hits, Marlins drop road trip finale to Mets
Trevor Rogers seemingly all season has been looking for answers to his struggles on the mound. The Miami Marlins’ left-handed pitcher and runner-up for National League Rookie of the Year just a season ago has seldom found success in 2022.
And he’s trying to figure out his problems, tweaking his mechanics and trying to rid himself of bad habits, all while pitching every fifth game.
“It’s very frustrating,” Rogers said, “just knowing that I’m not at the level that I need to be.”
The frustrating process continued on Monday in the Marlins’ 6-0 loss to the New York Mets at Citi Field that dropped Miami to 29-36 on the season and 4-6 on this three-city road trip that started in Houston and continued through Philadelphia before ending in New York.
Rogers pitched better than his final line showed, a sliver of solace that the 24-year-old lefty hopes to take from the outing. He gave up four runs (three earned runs) on five hits, two walks and a wild pitch while striking out seven and inducing whiffs on 23 of the 46 swings Mets hitters took.
The first run came on a bases-loaded walk. Two more came on sacrifice flies. The fourth came on a wild pitch.
It paved the way for the Mets (45-24) to take the series finale and three of four games overall in this series.
“They executed on us,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said, “but I thought Trevor looked pretty good.”
Of 13 starts this season, Rogers has pitched beyond the fifth just twice. He has a 5.83 ERA, more than double the 2.64 mark he produced last season.
And his outings generally tend to fade before they can even begin. Rogers on average is throwing 21.45 pitches in the first innings of his starts this year. It was more of the same Monday, when he needed 25 pitches to maneuver out of a bases-loaded, no-outs jam against the Mets after Brandon Nimmo hit a leadoff double, Starling Marte reached on a fielding error and Francisco Lindor hit an infield single.
Rogers limited the damage to one run — giving up a bases-loaded walk to Mark Canha with one out before striking out J.D. Davis and getting Jeff McNeil to line out — and followed up with perfect second and third innings. The Mets then scored two runs in the fourth on an Eduardo Escobar sacrifice fly that scored Davis and a wild pitch that allowed McNeil to score from third. A Pete Alonso sacrifice fly in the fifth plated another run.
The Mets added two more runs in the eighth off Tommy Nance.
The Marlins’ offense didn’t provide Rogers any support, either. Miami stranded seven runners on base, went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position and hit into inning-ending double plays in both the fifth and sixth innings.
For the four-game series against the Mets, the Marlins went 5 for 38 (.132) with runners in scoring position after entering the four-game setting hitting .339 (43 for 127) in those situations through their first 15 games in June.
“You’ve got to keep getting them out there,” Mattingly said. “When you keep getting guys out there and giving yourself scoring chances, you’re gonna start scoring runs.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2022 at 4:33 PM.
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