Marlins fall short
Conley gives up six runs in 8-2 loss to Nationals.
“I wasn’t as sharp as I had been at times and definitely not as consistent as I want to be.” Adam Conley,
pitcher
MIAMI — In his sixth-inning retreat to the third-base dugout Sunday, Adam Conley covered 32 steps. Each step served to distance Conley from his worst career start, each st ride separating him from an eventual 8-2 Miami Marlins loss to the Washington Nationals.
Conley’s exit was foreign ground for the left-hander. He had never given up six runs in a start, and had never walked seven batters in a start. Conley did both in 5 1⁄ 3 innings Sunday, though three walks were intentional.
“Anyone who knows me hardly at all knows that’s my least favorite thing in baseball is putting a guy on for free,” Conley said. “And seven of those guys got on there today, inmy eyes, without earning it. That’s a hard pill to swallow.”
With the loss, Miami (22-21) has now lost four of its past five games and fell 41⁄ 2games behind Washington (27-17) for the division lead. After meeting 13 times in the season’s first couple of months, the two clubs will not play again until September.
Conley ran into some misfortune in the third, when the Nationals pushed across one run without the ball leaving the infield and another on a soft double to left field. Conley also issued three walks that inning, two of them intentional. None of the walks were converted into runs, but they may affected Conley’s rhythm.
With all the baserunners, Conley directed his focus to controlling the running game, varying the time he held the ball and his delivery to the plate. His tempo was thrown off its typical speedy nature.
“I was trying to control the running game, andmaybe at times, I was more focused on that than I should have been,” Conley said. “Just a lot of traffic today, a lot of guys on.”
Walks were Conley’s undoing in the sixth inning, when he walked the first two batters of the inning before giving up Danny Espinosa’s one-run single and Ben Revere’s two-run base hit. The walks had turned from harmless to critical. Conley threw only 58 of his 106 pitches for strikes.
The Miami offense did little to help Conley’s effort, mustering just three baserunners in the first six innings off right-hander Max Scherzer. Miami struck out eight times against Scherzer. No Marlin reached third base until Justin Bour’s two-run home run in the seventh inning.
“Max really manhandled us through the course of the day,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said.
Bour’s homer found the upper deck of the right-field seats, his second such shot in as many days. He nowhas nine home runs this season, second on the team to Giancarlo Stanton’s 11.
Stanton snapped a 0-for-19 stretch with a fifthinning single, but struck out twice. Ichiro Suzuki recorded his second consecutive multi-hit game by going 2 for 4.
In the past five games, Miami’s offense has scored a total of nine runs. The Marlins have not scored more than five runs in eight days.
The outing inflated Conley’s ERA to 4.15 after starting the day at a tidy 3.40. The 25-year-old had been one of the Marlins’ biggest surprises this season, delivering three scoreless starts, including a near no-hitter. It was Conley who steadied Miami’s rotation as Wei-Yin Chen found his footing and Jose Fernandez struggled to pitch deep into games.
Neither Conley’s promise nor his potential revealed themselves Sunday, a careers-tart uncovering itself instead.
“I wasn’t as sharp as Ihad been at times and definitely not as consistent as I want to be,” Conley said.