Miami Marlins fall to 0-8 despite home runs from Burger and Bell in loss to Cardinals
The Miami Marlins came oh-so-close to putting everything together to get their first win of the 2024 season.
And then the St. Louis Cardinals rallied for five runs in the seventh to beat Miami 8-5 on Thursday at Busch Stadium to begin a three-game series.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to hold the lead,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “It’s just what it is. We’ve had plenty of times where we had leads late. We just haven’t won the games and held on. We’ve just got to figure out a way to to step up and hold them late in the game.”
The Marlins are now 0-8 on the season, becoming the first team since the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins in 2016 to lose at least their first eight games of a season. Both the 2016 Braves and Twins started the season with nine consecutive losses.
“We talk a lot about ‘What are we doing right now?’” second baseman Luis Arraez said. “We lose a lot of games. Everybody knows that. We’re frustrated right now because we want to win.”
The defeat on Thursday came in spite of Jake Burger, a St. Louis native, smashing a pair of home runs in his first MLB game at his hometown ballpark and Josh Bell adding a two-run shot of his own. Miami’s fifth run came when Tim Anderson scored on a wild pitch in the sixth inning. Couple that with a decent showing from starting pitcher Ryan Weathers (three earned runs allowed over five innings), and Miami had a 5-3 lead. All it needed was for the bullpen to hold things down.
Anthony Bender started it off fine with a scoreless sixth inning.
It all unraveled in the seventh. Paul Goldschmidt reached on a Luis Arraez fielding error before Nolan Arenado and Ivan Herrera hit back-to-back one-out singles to score the first run and chase Sixto Sanchez. Nolan Gorman then hit a two-run double against Andrew Nardi to give St. Louis (4-4) a 6-5 lead before the Cardinals scored their final two runs of the frame on an Alec Burleson RBI single and Masyn Winn RBI triple.
The Marlins’ bullpen has pitched to a 6.58 ERA through the first eight games of the season — 29 earned runs allowed in 39 2/3 innings of work.
“Today,” Nardi said, “I failed my job. I let the team down, which sucks.”
