Takeaways as rough Eury Perez start sets stage for Miami Marlins loss to New York Mets
Miami Marlins rookie right-handed pitcher Eury Perez struggled through an abbreviated start and the group of five relievers that followed him collectively didn’t fare much better in a 8-3 loss to the New York Mets on Wednesday at loanDepot park.
The Marlins (79-74) dropped the three-game series to the Mets (71-81). Miami dropped the series opener 2-1 on Monday before winning 4-3 in walk-off fashion on Tuesday.
Perez lasted just three innings Wednesday, giving up three runs (two earned runs) on three hits and three walks while striking out two.
After Perez worked out of a two-on, no-out jam in the first inning, the Mets opened scoring with a Mark Vientos solo home run in the second and then scored two more runs against Perez in a six-batter, 31-pitch third inning that also included a pair of errors by the defense behind Perez (more on that in a minute).
The Mets hit three more home runs against the Marlins’ bullpen, with Vientos hitting his second home run of the game in the sixth inning against George Soriano, Brett Baty going deep in the eighth against Johnny Cueto and Brandon Nimmo hitting a home run of his own in the ninth against Cueto.
New York also scored two runs in the seventh inning on a Pete Alonso RBI single against Soriano and a Francisco Lindor RBI groundout against David Robertson.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Is Eury Perez fading down the stretch?
After Perez’s previous outing against the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, he mentioned how he felt tired during the outing as he battled through 4 2/3 innings of work.
It’s understandable why that would be the case. With each pitch Perez throws, the 20-year-old is creeping deeper into uncharted territory. He has thrown nearly twice as many innings this year as he has in either of his first two innings of professional baseball.
Which brings us to Wednesday. Perez struggled with his command against the Mets over his three innings. His secondary pitches rarely found the zone. His misses with those pitches were bad enough to become easy takes for Mets hitters who were able to focus on attacking his four-seam fastball.
Perez has now thrown 91 1/3 innings in 19 MLB starts. Add in his time in the minor leagues, and his total innings pitched jumps to 128. For context, he threw 78 innings in 2021 and 83 innings in 2022. That’s an increase of 45 innings — about 54.2 percent more innings thrown this year than last year.
In four September starts, Perez has a 5.19 ERA (10 earned runs in 17 1/3 innings) with 18 strikeouts against nine walks. He has allowed five of his 15 home runs in this stretch despite it accounting for fewer than 20 percent of his total big-league innings.
Misplays, missed opportunities and missing players
The Marlins had their share of opportunities to both tack on runs and to minimize the Mets’ damage.
Too many miscues on both side of the ball ended up costing them.
Start with the third inning. After Perez walked Nimmo to lead off the inning, Ronny Mauricio hit a single to right field. Jesus Sanchez misfired his throw to third base and then Burger misfired on a throw home that allowed Nimmo to score and Mauricio to get to third base. Mauricio scored one play later on an Alonso sacrifice fly.
Then the Marlins ran into two outs on the basepaths in the fifth inning. After Jorge Soler led off the inning with a single, Jazz Chisholm Jr. smoked a Senga fastball to right field that moved Soler to third. However, Chisholm was thrown out trying to stretch the single into a double. One at-bat later, Xavier Edwards hit a shallow flyball to right field. Soler tried to score on the play was was tagged out.
Overall, the Marlins had the leadoff batter reach base in six of nine innings and had 10 hits overall, but only scored three runs on a Garrett Hampson sacrifice fly in the fourth, a Josh Bell leadoff home run in the sixth and Yuli Gurriel pinch-hit RBI single in the eighth.
And to add to the misfortune, Burger left the game following his third-inning error with right quad tightness. This comes with the Marlins already without Luis Arraez, who has missed the past two games with a left ankle sprain.
Where things stand in the playoff race
Even with the loss, the Marlins remain just a half-game behind the Chicago Cubs for the National League’s third and final wild card spot with nine regular-season games remaining after the Cubs lost to the Pirates on Wednesday.
Miami is idle Thursday while the Cubs (79-73) finish their three-game series with the Pirates. If Pittsburgh wins that game, the Marlins will be back in the third wild-card spot — Miami and Chicago would have identical records but the Marlins own the head-to-head tiebreaker with the Cubs.
As for other results involving wild-card contenders, the Phillies beat the Braves 6-5 in 10 innings, the Reds lost to the Twins 5-3 and the Diamondbacks beat the Giants 7-1.
This story was originally published September 20, 2023 at 9:46 PM.
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