Marlins lose eighth straight game, Mat Latos and Henderson Alvarez to DL
Take a look around the league with Big League Stew’s daily wrap up. We’ll hit on all of the biggest moments from the day that you may have missed, while providing highlights, photos and interesting stats.
The Miami Marlins weeks of turmoil and terrible baseball continued on Friday, this time with an 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. That makes eight straight losses for Miami, all of which have come on their current 10-game homestand which is set to end on Sunday.
That moment probably can’t come soon enough for a Marlins team that desperately needs to get out of town and regroup. The former will definitely happen. It may honestly be too late for the latter to matter if it does happen.
As for Friday, it started out promising as the Marlins tallied three early runs against Ubaldo Jimenez. But hope quickly faded when Baltimore scored two in the fifth and four more in the sixth, all against Henderson Alvarez. Adding insult to injury, immediately following the game Miami placed both Alvarez and another starter, Mat Latos, on the disabled list with injuries.
Of all Miami’s issues, the injuries in their rotation might be the most concerning.
On the plus side, Miami actually outhit Baltimore 14-11, including a milestone from Ichiro Suzuki, who passed Babe Ruth on the all-time hit list. However, they were burned by seven walks and an ill-timed error in the decisive fifth inning.
They’ll now seek that elusive win on Saturday when they send veteran Dan Haren against O’s rookie Mike Wright.
KING FELIX FIRST TO SEVEN WINS
In the race to seven wins, Felix Hernandez left all of his competition behind on Friday night. The Seattle Mariners right-hander pitched eight innings of one-run ball, allowing only four hits in Seattle’s 4-3 triumph against the Toronto Blue Jays, to become the league’s first seven-game winner.
After dropping his last decision to the Boston Red Sox on May 16, a game in which he allowed two homers and a season-high four walks, Hernandez bounced back, allowing just a solo home run to Edwin Encarnacion. Hernandez is 7-1 overall, but 7-0 in games when he’s pitched into the seventh inning or later.
There was some anxiety in the ninth when Fernando Rodney served up a two-run homer to Chris Colabello, but he recovered to retire Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson. Earlier, Nelson Cruz hit his league-leading 17th homer in support of Hernandez, which proved to be the winner. Logan Morrison gave Seattle the lead with a two-run triple.
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PRINCE FIELDER, RANGERS ROUGH UP MICHAEL PINEDA
With Masahiro Tanaka hurt, CC Sabathia struggling and no other real standout options available to lead their rotation, the New York Yankees were quite thrilled when Michael Pineda stepped up and started his season with an impressive string of outings.
Unfortunately, in the wake of his 16-strikeout performance against the Baltimore Orioles on May 10, he’s taken two steps backward. After allowing five runs on 10 hits in a loss to the Royals last weekend, Pineda was bounced around again, this time by the Texas Rangers, allowing seven runs (four earned) in six innings.
All of the damage actually came in the third inning and was set up by a pair of errors. Pineda’s own throwing error really set the wheels in motion, and then Didi Gregorius followed immediately with an error of his own leading to the Rangers first two runs. The big inning was capped by Prince Fielder’s three-run homer and Mitch Moreland’s solo shot. Fielder hit a solo homer later that proved important in the outcome.
For his part, Gregorius at least partially made up for his blunder with his own three-run homer, but the Yankees had too big a hill to climb and not enough time to climb it.
DODGERS END THREE-GAME DROUGHT, LOSING STREAK
After being shut out completely during their three-game series in San Francisco earlier this week, the Los Angeles Dodgers scraped together just enough offense to upend the San Diego Padres, 2-1.
The run scoring drought actually extended to 35 innings before Andre Ethier doubled home Justin Turner in the fifth inning. Behind Zack Greinke, that seemed destined to hold up, but San Diego broke through themselves on a Will Venable RBI single in the seventh.
From there, it came down to one swing, Joc Pederson’s mammoth solo home run in the eighth, as the Dodgers ended the accompanying three-game losing streak in dramatic fashion.
If you’re going to wait, might as well make the next one count. Pederson’s timing was perfect, and the Dodgers are on back on the winning track as they open up a six-game homestand.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813
