CHICAGO -- Entering Tuesday, Marlins right-hander Brian Ellington had given up just one run in his first eight outings. He had an 0.87 ERA at the end of May, before his first outing in June pushed that number much higher.
Ellington, who now has a 5.91 ERA, said a priority Tuesday against the Cubs was getting ahead early in counts, so he consistently went to his fastball. The result?
"You let those guys see that pitch more than once, and they get in the on-deck circle and see that you're up there pumping heaters," Ellington said a day after the outing, in which he allowed six runs and recorded only one out. "I mean, one through nine in that lineup is ready to swing the bat at a fastball."
Ellington said he probably should've mixed his pitches -- although he did note that in a lot of those at-bats, things started to spiral quickly.
In fact, as Ellington pointed out, other than a five-pitch walk, he only threw 19 pitches that resulted in five balls in play and a strikeout.
"Everything happens pretty quickly," Ellington said.
It's also worth noting that Ellington's manager took some of the blame for the outing. After the game, Don Mattingly said he put Ellington in a bad spot against the middle of the Cubs' order.
But Ellington viewed it differently. He saw it as a learning experience.
At 26, the right-hander has thrown just shy of 70 innings in the Majors, but he said he could still take a lesson from the outing. He said one thing he'll probably do differently is step off the mound and reassess the gameplan when things start to go wrong.
Ellington also wasn't pleased with the placement of a few of his pitches, but he said it wouldn't be right to look at one or two pitches in an outing like that.
"You're not happy with any of the pitches," Ellington said. "You put some pitches where you want to; you don't put them where you want to; it doesn't matter. You walk away from that game, you didn't do your job."
As Ellington moves forward, the right-hander said the most important thing is to put the last outing behind him. His ERA for June might be a whopping 162.00, but that can change moving forward.
"This is a long season, and you've got to have a real short memory with the game," Ellington said. "Get back to the drawing board, stay confident and just every outing you have something like that happen, try to learn from it."