Marlins can’t maintain pressure in 7-5 loss to Brewers
The Miami Marlins (9-11) have built their early-season identity on pressure.
On Friday night, it helped them rally and ultimately unraveled in a 7-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers (11-8) in 10 innings at loanDepot Park.
The shape of the matchup made the theme obvious before first pitch. Milwaukee and Miami entered Friday first and second in the majors in stolen bases, with the Brewers at 27 and the Marlins at 25. They also arrived as two of the six youngest teams in baseball, built more on athleticism, speed and activity than pure power. For Miami, “pressure” is not only about swiping bags. It is about taking the extra base, speeding up defenders, forcing rushed throws and creating offense before the next hit even arrives.
“I think it’s kind of just who we are,” Xavier Edwards said before the game. “We have a really young team, an athletic bunch, so we know we can take advantage of other teams in different ways and areas… The kind of the culture that we’ve built here is that we run the bases the right way and we try to take extra 90s and score extra runs.”
Jakob Marsee, whose eight stolen bases entered the day tied for second in the majors, described the style in more practical terms.
“We never say we’re stealing off the catcher, we’re always stealing off the pitcher,” Marsee said.
A moment later, he explained why.
“When you can pick up on more and more tendencies that a pitcher has, it makes it a lot easier to steal a base,” Marsee said.
Marlins manager Clayton McCullough knew that same style was coming from the other dugout.
“We love the style the Brewers play and have a lot of respect for Pat,” McCullough said pregame. “They’ve been very aggressive on the bases. They put a lot of pressure on you. They put pressure on you before you play.”
Even with Milwaukee’s running game looming, McCullough said opponent style was not the deciding factor in how he managed his split behind the plate. Liam Hicks and Agustín Ramírez had each appeared in 10 games at catcher entering Friday, and McCullough said the Brewers’ speed did not meaningfully alter that plan.
“Yeah, not much,” McCullough said when asked how much Milwaukee’s aggressiveness on the base paths influenced the catching decision. “I think that both Liam and Gus are both going to catch… I don’t really take it into account a whole lot, really one or the other that’s back there to particular combo because of the opponent’s running game.”
For three innings, the game stayed mostly quiet. Jansen Junk worked around an early double steal in the second, and Milwaukee rookie Jacob Crow, making his major league debut, kept the Marlins from finding much rhythm. Miami put two men on in the third when Marsee walked and Edwards singled with two outs, but Ramírez struck out swinging on four pitches to end the inning.
Milwaukee broke through in the fourth, and it happened in the exact kind of sequence Miami wanted to avoid.
Gary Sánchez walked, Jake Bauers singled and Luis Rengifo was hit by a pitch to load the bases. Garrett Mitchell’s soft infield single brought home the first run.
Then came another costly mistake.
On Greg Jones’ grounder to shortstop, Otto López stepped on second and fired to first, but the throw sailed and another run scored on the fielder’s choice. One batter later, Jones stole second, and Ramírez’s throw trying to catch Rengifo too far off third skipped into left field, allowing Milwaukee to score its third run of the inning.
Pressure had become production, and Milwaukee had turned Miami’s sloppiness into a 3-0 lead.
The Brewers added another run in the sixth on Rengifo’s RBI double into the left-center gap, but Miami answered in a much different way than the one it had preached before the game.
Edwards opened the bottom half with a double off the left-center wall, and López changed the game with one swing, driving a two-run homer over the center-field wall to cut the deficit to 4-3.
López also tripled earlier in the fourth and finished 3 for 5 with a homer and two RBI. His bat gave the Marlins life, and the dugout fed off it. After the home run, López walked through the dugout holding a “Let’s Go Fighting Fish” sign as part of Miami’s home run celebration, a fitting visual on a night when the club was wearing its Miami Vice-colored City Connect uniforms.
McCullough pointed to both López and Edwards afterward as reasons the Marlins stayed in the game.
“He’s just a really good hitter,” McCullough said, referring to Edwards. “To see him driving some balls to the middle of the field and the other way with the type of authority that he’s shown here in the early goings is very encouraging.”
That growth from Edwards helped set the table, while López continued the hot stretch that has made him one of Miami’s steadiest hitters through the first three weeks of the season.
“Otto’s been on a really good run here,” McCullough said. “Otto, I think as an offensive player, is just continuing to mature.”
The risks of Miami’s aggressive style had already started to show before the comeback was complete. Heriberto Hernández was thrown out on the bases in the seventh after entering as a pinch-hitter, a reminder that pressure only works when it is paired with clean execution.
Still, the Marlins got even in the eighth, and the ballpark finally came alive. Edwards drew a one-out walk, then scored from first when Ramírez lined a double off the left-field wall that kicked away from Jones. Miami had erased the three-run deficit and, at least briefly, looked like the more dangerous team as the crowd began to sense a comeback win.
Then it happened again.
In the ninth, Javier Sanoja drew a walk with one out in a tie game, then was picked off first, cutting short a potential winning rally before Miami could build anything around it. The Marlins were still playing aggressively. They just were not playing cleanly enough.
Unfortunately for the fish, the lack of execution carried into the 10th.
With the automatic runner at second, Calvin Faucher was called for a pitch-clock violation that turned a 3-1 count on Sánchez into a leadoff walk. Jake Bauers blooped a single into left to load the bases with no outs. The next batter, Rengifo, hit a ground ball to second. Edwards fielded it cleanly and threw home for the force, but the ball sailed out of Ramírez’s reach and the go-ahead run scored on the throwing error. Mitchell followed with a two-run double down the left-field line, stretching Milwaukee’s lead to 7-4.
Miami still threatened in the bottom half. Marsee, the automatic runner, advanced to third on a deep flyout by Edwards and scored on a wild pitch during Hicks’ at-bat. Hicks then doubled sharply down the right-field line to bring the tying run to the plate. López, already sitting on three hits, came up representing Miami’s final chance to extend the game, but struck out swinging on a 2-2 pitch from Trevor Megill.
The box score showed how thin the margin was. Milwaukee committed no errors. Miami committed two. The Brewers went 3 for 14 with runners in scoring position. The Marlins went 2 for 10. Miami had enough offense to climb back. It did not play a clean enough game to finish it.
McCullough did not dodge that afterward.
“We didn’t help ourselves out with just taking some outs that were potentially provided for us,” McCullough said. “We have to do better and it’s something that has to get better moving forward for us and just play cleaner from start to finish in games to give ourselves more shots.”
He also made it clear that he views nights like this as a test of what his team does next.
“I know we’re going to continue to get better,” McCullough said. “And you get to these small little intersections during the season where you’re not playing your crispest brand of baseball, you’re shooting yourself in the foot some… I think our group will certainly rally around where we’re at… we are capable of and will play a brand that I think we’re holding ourselves to, we just didn’t do that tonight.”
