Command eludes Eury Perez as Marlins fall to Orioles for fourth straight loss
The Miami Marlins’ offense bailed out Eury Perez in the first inning Wednesday after he gave up three runs to begin his start against the Baltimore Orioles.
It couldn’t do it a second time.
Perez’s command eluded him in another shaky outing and the Marlins’ offense fell flat after its initial outburst in a 7-4 loss to the Orioles at loanDepot park.
The Marlins fall to 16-21, a season-worst five games under .500, and their four-game losing streak matches the worst stretch of the season thus far — Miami also lost four in a row from April 14-18.
Perez gave up a season-high five runs before being pulled after giving up consecutive walks to lead off the sixth inning. He issued five walks, one shy of his season-high and also hit a batter.
“A bad one,” Perez said of his outing, one that pushed his season ERA to 5.01.
Three of those five runs came in the first inning when Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso sent a middle-away fastball a projected 407 feet to left-center field for a three-run home run.
The Marlins’ offense worked a furious two-out rally in the bottom half of the inning, tying the game on a Jakob Marsee two-run double and Owen Caissie RBI single.
But Miami managed just three hits and one run over the final eight innings.
“We just didn’t string any other at-bats together there,” manager Clayton McCullough said.
And that only came after Baltimore (17-20) retook a lead and built upon it.
The Orioles scored runs in the fourth and fifth against Perez on RBI doubles from Dylan Beavers and Adley Rutschman to go up 5-3.
“A lot of learning situations that I had in the game,” Perez said.
After Perez walked Samuel Basallo and Leody Tavares to start the sixth, McCullough turned to rookie lefty Dax Fulton in his MLB debut to get out of the jam. Fulton did just that in the sixth with a pair of strikeouts and a groundout before giving up a pair of runs, first on Rutschman’s second RBI double of the game in the seventh and then on a Blaze Alexander RBI triple in the eighth.
Fulton pitched the final four innings, giving up the two runs on three hits and two walks with three strikeouts. He’s the fourth pitcher in Marlins history to throw at least four innings of relief in his MLB debut, joining Enmanuel De Jesus (4 1/3 innings on Sept. 9, 2023), Jeff Lindgren (five innings on April 3, 2023) and Brandon Leibrandt (four innings on Aug. 23, 2020).
Miami briefly cut its deficit to 6-4 on an Xavier Edwards RBI groundout in the seventh that scored Otto Lopez, who led off the inning with a pinch-hit double and moved to third on a Javier Sanoja flyout.
This and that
- With his double, Lopez extended his hit streak to nine games. It’s his second hitting streak of nine games this season after also doing so from April 11-20. Lopez overall this season has hit safely in 31 of Miami’s first 37 games to begin the season. It marks the second-most games with a hit in this span in Marlins history, trailing only Hanley Ramírez, who hit safely in 32 of 37 games to start the 2008 season.
- Closer Pete Fairbanks threw a 13-pitch bullpen session pregame Wednesday and is scheduled to throw another on Friday.
This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 9:24 PM.
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