‘How do you think we feel?’: Frustration mounts as Marlins start 0-6 after All-Star Break
The Miami Marlins insist they aren’t panicking.
But there’s no denying frustration is starting to appear.
“How do you think we feel?” Marlins starting pitcher Sandy Alcantara asked rhetorically Wednesday. “We feel [expletive] bad because we lost six games in a row.”
After going into the All-Star Break with the second-best record in the National League, the Marlins opened the unofficial second half of the season with a road trip to forget.
Three games in Baltimore against the playoff-contending Orioles. Three losses.
Three games in St. Louis against the not-playoff-contending Cardinals. Three more losses.
It’s the first time this year the Marlins (53-45) have lost six consecutive games and the first time since August 2019 that they went without a win on a road trip of at least six games.
And it put a hit on the Marlins’ playoff hopes. Miami entered the All-Star Break holding the National League’s top wild card spot. Now, they’re on the outside looking in, albeit only a half game behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the third wild-card spot and one and a half games behind the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks, who hold the top two wild-card positions entering Thursday.
According to FanGraphs, the Marlins’ playoff chances entering the All-Star Break were 74.5 percent. The Marlins’ playoff chances entering Thursday’s off day, following the six-game losing streak: 46.8 percent.
“We knew that anytime you have a 162-game season, you’re going to hit adversity,” Marlins utility player Jon Berti said. “It’s probably better to hit it now and respond to it as we continue to grow as a team because there’s definitely going to be a lot of adversity if we want to play in the big games.”
As Berti noted, losing streaks happen with every team. Every team in MLB has lost at least four consecutive games at one point this season. Fifteen teams, half the league, has at least one losing streak of six games, including the playoff-contending Tampa Bay Rays (seven consecutive games), Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers. The Rays and Atlanta Braves, the top teams in each league entering the break, are currently on four-game losing streaks.
The timing of Miami’s longest losing streak of the season is unfortunate.
Their previous season-long losing streak before this one was five games in early May when they were swept in a three-game home series against the Braves May 2-4 and then dropped the first two games of a road series against the Chicago Cubs May 5-6 to fall to 16-18 early in the season.
Miami went 37-21 the rest of the way into the All-Star Break, before they dropped these six games just more than a week and a half before MLB’s trade deadline. The Marlins are poised to be buyers. Stopping this skid and stringing together a few wins before the Aug. 1 deadline would do wonders to assure the front office that adding to the roster for a playoff push — ideally an impact bat and a right-handed reliever — is the move to make.
And it’s not like the Marlins were blown out in any capacity. All six games were decided by no more than three runs, including a pair of one-run losses against Baltimore after going 21-6 in one-run games before the All-Star Break.
“Guys here want to win,” catcher Jacob Stallings said. “It’s important. So there’s going to be frustration, especially when most of the games were close games. Everybody’s just gotta do a little bit better.”
So what went wrong on this road trip?
They failed to get the clutch hit. The Marlins went a combined 12 for 64 (.188) with runners in scoring position over the six games. Their .436 on-base-plus-slugging mark with runners in scoring position since the All-Star Break is the worst in MLB
They also failed to maintain leads when they had them. Miami led Baltimore 4-0 on Saturday before falling 6-5, led the Cardinals 2-1 and tied the game at 3-3 on Monday before losing 6-4, and had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 against St. Louis on Tuesday before falling 5-2 in 10 innings on a walk-off three-run home run.
“We were winning games [in the first half] that we’re losing now,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “It’s part of the season. You have winning streaks. You have losing streaks. It’s just how you bounce back and how you get out of these things.”
Or, as Stallings succinctly put it: “We just didn’t play good enough.”
A reset is needed, and Miami will have a chance to do it with an extended run of games at loanDepot park.
The Marlins play 10 of their next 12 games at home, starting with a weekend series against the Colorado Rockies that begins Friday. They then go to St. Petersburg for a two-game series against the Rays before playing the next seven at home — three games against the Detroit Tigers July 28-30 and four against the Phillies July 31-Aug. 3.
Miami is 30-18 at home this season.
“We started on the wrong foot in the second half,” outfielder Bryan De La Cruz said, “but tomorrow is going to be another day. There are going to be opportunities every day, every day, every day. Just have to continue battling and just take this opportunity and keep playing.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2023 at 9:19 AM.
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