Struggles by Hernandez, bullpen extend Marlins’ losing skid to four
Shortly after Jon Berti took the four-time All-Star deep in the first inning on Wednesday afternoon, Madison Bumgarner took exception with the home plate umpire Ryan Wills’ strike zone.
Bumgarner was then ejected by first base umpire Dan Bellino for vehemently arguing to the point where his teammates had to escort him back to the Diamondbacks dugout.
A turning point for the recently-struggling Marlins, right?
Guess again.
Even after the Marlins seemed to overcome more struggles from starter Elieser Hernandez with a late rally, its bullpen failed when Anthony Bender surrendered a two-run, ninth-inning home run to Pavin Smith resulting in an 8-7 loss to the Diamondbacks.
Smith, a Palm Beach Gardens High alum, hit a high fly ball that carried just past the right field fence after center fielder Daulton Varsho singled off Bender with one out.
“It looked like [Bender] tried to go back door and get it in on him and [Smith] just stayed on it,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said.
It was Bender’s second blown save this season.
Bender, who has only had a clean inning once in his 10 appearances so far this season, has had two other games in which he surrendered the eventual winning run with the game tied.
“These hurt. Anytime you lose late like that it hurts you,” Mattingly said. “We finally get that big hit that we needed to break through and you feel like. OK we have a chance to put a game away, and we’re unable to do it.”
The Marlins (12-12) dropped their fourth in a row after putting together a seven-game winning streak and dropped all three games to Arizona by one run.
It was the Diamondbacks’ first sweep at loanDepot Park since sweeping a four-game set May 18-21, 2015.
The loss squandered a milestone game for Berti, who recorded the first multi-home run game of his career.
The Marlins erased a three-run deficit with two in the seventh and two in the eighth as Berti and Jesus Aguilar hit back-toback homers in the earlier frame to start the comeback. It was the first set of consecutive home runs this season for the Marlins, who have hit 24 overall.
Bryan De La Cruz’s two-out RBI single tied the game at 6 in the bottom of the eighth and Jazz Chisholm
Jr. scored on a wild pitch by D’Backs reliever Kenyan Middleton to put the Marlins ahead.
“It’s been tough this whole series not going the way we wanted,” Berti said. “We battled all day today, yesterday and the day before. Even when we were down a few runs we felt like we could scratch and claw our way back and we did it again, but unfortunately it didn’t go our way.”
But the Marlins, who have continued to look for consistency at the closer spot and are waiting for a key piece in injured reliever Dylan Floro to return, watched the lead slip away.
The Marlins took a 3-0 lead after two innings following Bumgarner’s dismissal, but that didn’t last either as Hernandez allowed five runs on five hits while walking three batters and striking out three. Hernandez lasted four innings and threw 78 pitches (48 for strikes).
“I feel like if I had executed my pitches better I would have gotten better results,” Hernandez said. “I had pitches out of the zone and sometimes walks are just going to hurt you.”
Hernandez entered the game having allowed a National League-high six home runs in four starts, and gave up a seventh in the fourth inning when Varsho belted a two-run homer to right-center field to put Arizona ahead 5-3.
An error in center field by De La Cruz when he missed a ball hit by Sergio Alcantara allowing it to get to the warning track led to a sixth Arizona run.
The Marlins’ biggest strength has weakened over that span as their starting pitchers have allowed 19 earned runs over their past 18 ⅔ innings during this losing streak.
While the top of the Marlins’ rotation has been solid with Sandy Alcantara and Pablo Lopez off to strong starts overall, and an improved Jesus Luzardo is delivering on the back end, the middle duo of Hernandez (2-2, 6.66 ERA) and Trevor Rogers (1-4, 6.14) has struggled.
Aguilar, who went 3 for 5, singled in the ninth with one out, but Jorge Soler and Garrett Cooper flied out to end the game.
“The walks [for Hernandez] seemed like all day,” Mattingly said. “The triple got him into trouble and then it seemed like from there it kind of kept going. He’s a guy who has to be pretty specific with his fastball. And he was throwing a lot of fastballs way up today. He threw some good changeups early, but he has to be specific with his fastball.”