Marlins unfazed by sluggish start
MIAMI — Pitcher Tom Koehler said he’d never heard anything like it at Marlins Park. The response from Wednesday’s announced crowd of 16,197 after Giancarlo Stanton’s runsaving play in the fourth-inning was such that Koehler did not immediately get back on the mound.
“I had to step off so he could get his due,” Koehler said.
With a man on first base in a scoreless game, Stanton fully extended for a back-handed overhead catch. He tumbled to the turf but popped up quickly and fired back to double off the runner at first.
It was exactly what manager Mike Redmond thought his struggling offensive team needed.
“We’re just not able to get that big hit right now,” said Redmond after the Braves’ completed a season-opening three-game sweep with a 2-0 win Wednesday. “We’ve had several opportunities, but it’ll come. These guys, I’m sure, are a little bit frustrated but we’ll be fine. Just stick with our approach.”
At 0-3, Miami hosts Tampa Bay (1-2) in a three-game weekend series.
The Marlins top to bottom showed good approaches in spring training. They hit .265 as a team. Of their 243 hits, 72 went for extra bases. The Braves in the three-game set held the Marlins to three total runs, a .202 average and two extra-base hits. Opening Day starter Henderson Alvarez accounted for the first with a double and on Tuesday Donovan Solano delivered a pinch-hit RBI triple.
“You go through spells like that,” Redmond said. “We came out of spring training swinging the bats really well. For whatever reason we cooled off here. I’ll give the Braves credit for the way they pitched. We need to come out and respond on Friday.”
Neither Redmond nor anyone else who wears a Marlins’ uniform for a living is panicking about the slow offensive start. Last season alone the Marlins were limited to three runs or fewer over a three-game stretch five times, including six straight games from Sept. 18-24.
“We did things better [Wednesday],” Christian Yelich said. “We had good at-bats, hit some balls hard. A few of them were just right at guys. That’s baseball. We kind of hit a little bit of a rough skid right off the gate. Sometimes the ball just didn’t fall. A couple of those drop in or miss guys, you never know what can happen.”
Case in point, Yelich in the third inning with a man on second and one out made solid contact on a Shelby Miller offering back up the middle. The ball looked earmarked for an RBI single, but Miller employed a nice kick save to keep the ball from squirting through.
“He knocks it down with his foot, holds it to an infield single and is able to get out of it,” Yelich said. “It hasn’t been bouncing our way, but we’re going to be all right.”