TORONTO – The Marlins can finally breathe a sigh of relief, but not without some possible sulking on Thursday’s much-needed off-day.
Wednesday afternoon marked the end of a grueling stretch of 26 games in 27 days to open May, which ended in frustrating fashion in a 2-1 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
Miami went 11-15 in a span that featured a bit of everything:
The club designated free-agent signing Chris Paddack for assignment. There were six consecutive days of Major League callups, including Top 100 prospect Robby Snelling’s highly anticipated Major League debut, then season-ending elbow surgery two weeks later.
Sandy Alcantara resembled near-vintage Sandy before turning into early-2025 Sandy. Max Meyer became the rotation’s most reliable starter, and one of the National League’s breakout arms.
The Marlins went from second in the National League East to last – though just for a day – as they put together a season-high four-game winning streak.
“We had a little spurt there, where we feel like we got ourselves back into a better place,” manager Clayton McCullough said. “We certainly wanted to try to carry that over into this series, try to finish before the off-day on a positive note, win another series. That's what we're going to need to do. We clawed back a little bit, but we're going to need to just go and try to stack some series together to get ourselves back into a better position.”
Just like this exhausting stretch, Wednesday’s series finale had a bit of everything.
Right-hander Eury Pérez struck out a season-high nine batters over four scoreless innings, but he exited with a right hamstring spasm and will undergo imaging to determine the severity.
If Pérez must miss time, it’ll put the rotation in a tough spot with Snelling out, lefty Braxton Garrett trying to regain his command at Triple-A Jacksonville and Tyler Phillips already being converted into a starter.
“Bit happy for my performance,” Pérez said via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “It was good. Everything else is God’s plan. Not fully happy because we lost today, and we’ve got to continue and get that performance out there, do it well.”
On the offensive side of things, Miami will need others to step up outside of Otto Lopez and Xavier Edwards, who combined for seven hits on Wednesday.
For the second time this series, Edwards led off the game with a double. He scored two batters later on Lopez’s RBI single up the middle – the first of his career-high-tying four hits – to increase his MLB-leading average (.342) and hit total (75).
But Miami left eight on base and went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position while outhitting Toronto 11-5.
Since the Marlins’ lineup often won’t outslug others, they must manufacture runs with their wheels. Live by the baserunning or die by the baserunning. The series finale was the latter.
“Our brand of baseball requires us to be really aggressive,” first-base coach Craig Driver said earlier this month. “We have a ton of team speed and a lot of guys that can get on base, and we try to maximize that as much as possible, so that ends up with us taking on some risk. But it's something that we're OK with.”
While the Marlins stole five bases on Wednesday, they got caught four times – all in the sixth inning or later. Speedster Esteury Ruiz, who entered the game in the seventh as a pinch-runner, was thrown out for the first time this season.
With Miami trailing 2-1 in the eighth, Lopez and Kyle Stowers opened with back-to-back singles before Jakob Marsee sent a comebacker to righty Louis Varland, who managed to get just one out on the play. With runners on the corners, Connor Norby struck out looking and Marsee was thrown out to end the rally.
Despite Wednesday’s result, Lopez believes the club is trending up. McCullough was pleased with the at-bat quality against a tough veteran in Kevin Gausman.
“The pitchers have been doing their job, and I think we just left too many people on base today, and that was the opportunity that we have, and we didn't take it today,” Lopez said. “But I know we learned from those, and then the next series in New York, we've got to do better and work on those things.
“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, and the last down we had, we came up stronger [by sweeping the Mets]. The series that we lost today, tomorrow is going to be another day. I know it's just keeping our head up and just keep going.”