Marlins now 6 out of wild card
Pitcher Despaigne struggles to get through 4 innings
MIAMI — Don Mattingly is as big a fan of Odrisamer Despaigne as you’ll find, the Miami Marlins manager a witness to Despaigne’s flashes of effectiveness when he led the Dodgers and the pitcher played for the Padres.
And so with Despaigne serving as the Marlins’ new utility pitcher — starter, long man, set-up guy, one-time closer — Mattingly is firm in his belief that, somewhere inside Despaigne, is a good pitcher.
That side of Despaigne didn’t show itself Thursday in the Marlins’ 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, Miami’s fourth loss in a row as it sunk to six games back of an NL wild-card spot. Despaigne allowed three runs in four innings, throwing 90 pitches.
“It’s there. I’ve seen the good. So I know it’s there,” Mattingly said Thursday afternoon. “There’s a number of things you can do [with Despaigne’s role]. Is the consistency going to be there? That’s go- ing to be the knock on him, you don’t quite know what you’re going to get all the time. Some days it’s really good, and some days it’s less energy and less.
“Can it be consistent? That’s really what you’re searching for. And how do we use that talent he has? If it’s consistent, where is the best place for him?”
Despaigne’s undoing came in a 38-pitch fourth inning, which could be characterized as unlucky.
The Phillies’ five balls in play had hit probabilities of 7, 42, 45, 31 and 16 percent, according to MLBAM’s Statcast. Hit probability is a modern metric that rates the likelihood a given batted ball turns into a hit based on how hard it is hit and at what angle, attaching a number to common baseball phrases such as seeingeye single or sneaking one through the infield. In the case of the Phillies’ fourth, all of their batted balls were more likely to be outs.
On those five mostly poorly hit balls, Philadelphia scored three runs. Among the three hits: a catchable, soft line drive off the glove of a diving Derek Dietrich at third and a bouncing single up the middle from Ben Lively, the opposing starting pitcher.
Despaigne, to be sure, did himself no favors. Both of his walks Thursday were to batters he was ahead of 0-2. One of them scored. He also hit a batter, and the single from Lively — theoretically an easy out — scored two runs.
The Miami offense had its chances, including loading the bases in the second, third and ninth innings but scoring only one run. The Marlins finished 2 for 14 with runners in scoring position and left 12 men on base.
Christian Yelich’s bloop
double in the fifth brought the Marlins to within one run.
The Marlins thought they tied the game in the eighth inning, but pinchhitter Tomas Telis was ruled out for interference after running too far onto the grass on his way to first. Derek Dietrich, who had scored on the play as the Phillies’ throw scooted down the right-field line, was forced to go back to first.
Giancarlo Stanton went 0 for 5, twice popping up to the infield while ahead in the count and twice striking out swinging at full-count offspeed pitches. He flew out to center in the ninth with a chance to win the game.