The Miami Marlins depressing begin to the 2024 season continued on Saturday with a 3-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. It not solely dropped them to 0-9, however they’re the primary staff to start out the season with 9 consecutive losses because the 2016 Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves each began that poorly. These groups went on to lose 93 and 103 video games respectively that season.
It’s a beautiful flip for a Marlins staff that exceeded expectations a yr in the past and earned a Nationwide League wild-card spot with 84 wins.
There are lots of components at play right here for why they’ve regressed so badly.
The primary one, and maybe the simplest to justify, is that their beginning rotation has been decimated by accidents with Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, Eury Perez and Braxton Garrett all being sidelined. Alcantara and Perez needed to bear Tommy John surgical procedure, whereas Cabrera and Garrett had been injured throughout spring coaching.
There may be not a staff in baseball that’s going to seek out a lot success when 4 of its 5 beginning pitchers are injured.
The Marlins have already allowed 62 runs in 9 video games, together with seven video games the place they’ve allowed a minimum of six runs.
However it’s not simply the pitching that has damage them.
The lineup has been equally dangerous with a .589 OPS with nearly no contributions from their prime gamers together with Josh Bell, Luis Arraez and Jazz Chisholm Jr.
As promising because the Marlins’ 2023 season was, there ought to have been some considerations coming into this season even earlier than you get into the accidents to the pitching workers. The largest concern was their shockingly good successful proportion in one-run video games (33-14) a yr in the past. If you wish to be optimistic, you may say they had been a troublesome, gritty staff that discovered methods to grind out wins and performed nicely within the clutch. That will have been true to a sure extent. The extra sensible outlook on that, nevertheless, is that they most likely had slightly little bit of luck on their aspect and it’s actually tough to win that many shut video games on a year-to-year foundation.
Solely one of many Marlins’ first 9 losses this season has been by one run, however they’ve dropped two extra-inning and two two-run video games. Nothing goes their approach.
In the event that they lose on Sunday they would be the first 0-10 because the 2002 season when the Detroit Tigers did it.
