MIAMI—It’s been a tough August for the Miami Marlins. During the first weekend of the month, they completed their climb back to .500 for the first time since April 15, but Miami has dropped 12 of 16 games since then. With Tuesday night’s loss to the St. Louis Cardinals at loanDepot park, they’ve now been beaten in five consecutive series.
Edward Cabrera took the mound looking to rebound from allowing a season-high five earned runs in Cleveland. But his struggles continued against a Cardinals lineup that has scuffled for most of the season.
St. Louis forced Cabrera to labor from the start, pushing across a run in a 29-pitch first inning. Though he escaped further damage with back-to-back strikeouts of Masyn Winn and Nolan Gorman, the Cardinals’ bats continued to fight. They tagged Cabrera for a career-high 11 hits and six runs (four earned) over 4 ⅓ innings, putting the leadoff man on base in every inning he pitched. Cade Gibson relieved him in the fifth.
“They did a nice job staying inside his mix and using the other side of the field,” manager Clayton McCullough said afterward. “They had a really good approach coming in, and Cabby just wasn’t able to land his secondary pitches in the zone like he has in previous outings.”
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Cabrera actually threw strikes consistently—he opened 88.5% of at-bats with a first-pitch strike—but the Cardinals found success with soft contact.
“What can I say? I went out there to attack, and they hit the ball soft sometimes and it fell in for hits,” Cabrera said through interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “My secondary pitches—curveball and slider—weren’t landing, so I had to throw more fastballs and sinkers, and they took advantage.”
Defense also didn’t help the right-hander as his battery mate, Agustín Ramírez, was tagged with a throwing error and a passed ball during Tuesday’s contest. He leads all MLB catchers with 12 passed balls despite starting only half of his games behind the plate.
“We’re going to continue to rally around Gus because we believe in the person and the ability,” McCullough said. “It’s been a couple of tough nights for Gus. I would imagine all of us have had a couple of tough days in a row at work. He’s going to go out there with (catching coach Joe Singley) and get right back to work tomorrow.”
The loss marked Cabrera’s first time this season being charged with defeats in back-to-back starts. Even so, he still holds a solid 3.52 ERA on the year.
Miami’s offense tried to rally. Rookie Jakob Marsee sparked the scoring with an RBI triple in the fourth inning and scored on a throwing error by Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy. In the sixth, Otto Lopez delivered a two-out, two-run single to cut the deficit to 6-4. But St. Louis tacked on an insurance run in the seventh against Gibson and the Marlins couldn’t capitalize on a pair of walks in the bottom of the ninth.
“We just haven’t been executing the way we had been in other portions of the season,” McCullough added. “I’m not going to ever use youth or anything else as an excuse for why things are happening because this is the major leagues and fatigue is a part of all of us.”
With the defeat, the Marlins fell to 59-67 while the Cardinals moved to 63-64. Miami will send Sandy Alcantara to the mound in Wednesday’s series finale against Andre Pallante. First pitch is set for 6:40 p.m.