Miami Marlins rally twice to win series against Detroit Tigers. Takeaways from the win
The Miami Marlins rallied from an early four-run deficit to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-6 on Sunday at loanDepot park.
The Marlins (57-49) won the three-game series. Miami took the series opener 6-5 on Friday but lost the middle game 5-0 on Saturday.
The series was the first three games of a 13-game stretch without an off day for Miami. The Marlins next host the Philadelphia Phillies for four games before a road trip with three games apiece against the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds — 10 games in 10 consecutive days against playoff-contending teams.
“We needed to win that series,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “I never say ‘must win’ but heading into a big series against Philly and a 13-game stretch [with no off days], this is a big homestand. Getting on track of winning the first series was important.”
After the Tigers took leads of 4-0 in the third and 6-5 in the seventh, Garrett Cooper hit a go-ahead, two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh inning against Tyler Holton to give Miami the lead for good.
Jean Segura added an insurance run in the eighth with a solo home run.
Prior to the two home runs, the Marlins scored four runs on five hits in the fifth inning to tie the game at 4-4 and took a brief 5-4 lead in the sixth before the Tigers tagged A.J. Puk for two runs in the seventh. Jorge Lopez, acquired Wednesday in a trade with the Minnesota Twins, relieved Puk and retired the two batters he faced to strand a pair of runners before Miami mounted its second comeback in the bottom half of the inning.
Tanner Scott, pitching for the first time since getting a mild right calf strain on Friday, threw a scoreless eighth inning before David Robertson, acquired from the New York Mets early Friday morning, tossed a shutout ninth inning for his first save with the Marlins.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
A nice return for Avisail Garcia
Avisail Garcia waited three months for this moment. His extended time on the injured list due to back tightness came to an end on Sunday, and he quickly delivered.
His one-out triple in the fifth inning was the first of five consecutive hits that led to the Marlins tying the game at 4-4. Yuli Gurriel and Segura followed up with singles before Nick Fortes and Garrett Hampson each hit run-scoring doubles.
Garcia then put the Marlins ahead temporarily with an RBI single in the sixth that scored Jon Berti, who reached on a fielding error then got to third base on a stolen base and then interference by the Tigers’ Zack Short while caught in a rundown between second and third.
After Miami gave up the lead in the top of the seventh, they scored three unanswered runs on the home runs from Cooper and Segura.
In addition to Garcia’s multi-hit outing, Hampson had three hits, while Berti, Gurriel and Segura each had two hits.
Jesus Luzardo averts one jam, but not the second
Command eluded Jesus Luzardo in his start on Sunday. An elevated pitch count knocked him out of the game after just 4 2/3 innings.
While Luzardo managed to get out of the first jam he faced, stranding the bases loaded in the second inning by striking out Short, he couldn’t do the same the second time around. The Tigers pegged him for all four runs he allowed on Sunday in the third, scoring on a Spencer Torkelson RBI single that bounced off Berti’s glove, a Javier Baez RBI single to center and a Miguel Cabrera two-run double to left.
It was the first time Luzardo had given up four runs in a game since June 12 against the Seattle Mariners.
Luis Arraez makes key defensive plays
The talk around Marlins second baseman Luis Arraez all season, naturally, has been about his offense. That’s understandable considering he leads baseball in batting average and still has an outside chance to be the first player since Ted Williams in 1941 to hit .400.
But don’t sleep on Arraez’s defense.
On Sunday, a day in which Arraez went 0 for 4 with a walk at the plate to drop his MLB-leading average to .377, Arraez threw out two runners at home, helping keep the game within striking distance early before the Marlins scored eight runs between the fifth and eighth innings.
“Huge plays,” Schumaker said, “especially realizing what the game was toward the end of the game.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2023 at 4:37 PM.
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