‘It’s not lack of effort’: Skip Schumaker assesses Marlins after franchise-worst 0-5 start
With the Miami Marlins off to the worst start in franchise history, their manager is getting introspective with how he can turn things around.
“The challenge for me,” Skip Schumaker said, “is trying to put our guys in the right situations to win. I’m obviously not doing a good job with that right now.”
The Marlins fell to 0-5 on the season with a 7-4 loss on Monday to the Los Angeles Angels after being swept in four games by the Pittsburgh Pirates to begin the season.
And the way Miami has lost has varied by the game.
They blew a pair of leads in the season opener for an eventual 6-5, 12-inning loss on Thursday. Then they were blown out 7-2 and 9-3 on Friday and Saturday. And then they blew first-innings leads of 5-0 in their finale on Sunday against Pittsburgh and 4-0 on Monday in their series opener against the Angels to fall 9-7 and 7-4, respectively.
With this Marlins team, there is little room for error if they want to win given their current roster construction. The lineup, with multiple valuable role players but to this point no real game-defining impact guy, needs to string quality at-bats together to produce runs. The starting pitching, gutted by injuries, needs to be efficient. And the bullpen, with roles still being defined, needs to lock things down when the game is turned over to them.
Pieces of that formula have been there through the first handful of games, but Miami has yet to have a complete outing where every facet is clicking.
“It’s not lack of effort,” Schumaker said. “It’s just lack of execution.”
That was on full display again Monday, when the offense made an early surge but failed to tack on and the bullpen gave the game away.
Miami jumped to a 4-0 lead in the first inning after sending nine to the plate. Luis Arraez led off with a walk, and Josh Bell followed by reaching base on catcher’s interference. Jake Burger and Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with consecutive run-scoring singles. Jesus Sanchez then hit a one-out ground ball to shortstop but both he and Chisholm beat out throws to load the bases. Nick Gordon then capped scoring with a two-out double.
The offense came up empty the rest of the way, behind held off the board the final eight innings, going 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position, leaving eight on base, and Burger and Bell (arguably Miami’s most consistent hitters so far in this young season) hitting into three double plays.
“We scored runs in the first inning,” Arraez said, “and then we stopped.”
It allowed the Angels to rally. They scored twice in five innings off starter Max Meyer, who was making his first start since undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2022, and then tied the score on back-to-back home runs from Nolan Schanuel and Mike Trout in the sixth inning against reliever George Soriano.
They took the lead for good in the eighth on an RBI groundout after Tanner Scott walked the first three batters he faced to load the bases.
“It’s pretty frustrating,” said Scott, who has walked six batters in three innings so far this season. “I come into a tie game trying to get the team back in it. It hasn’t happened.”
And then the Angels tacked on two more runs in the ninth on a Jo Adell RBI single that scored Logan O’Hoppe, who tripled when Nick Gordon went face-first into the wall trying to track down a fly ball, and a balk with a runner on third against reliever Burch Smith.
It was that kind of night — again — for the Marlins.
“You’re going to have games like this throughout the season,” Schumaker said. “It’s unfortunate that they’re back-to-back and back-to-back — five in a row. We’ve played a couple of good games that we’ve given away and then there are others where we’ve gotten beat. It’s been both.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2024 at 9:33 AM.
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