ATLANTA
Avert your eyes, Marlins fans.
Wednesday night was a loss for the history books.
The final score at Truist Park: Braves 29, Marlins 9.
It’s the most runs the Braves have ever scored in franchise history, the most by a National League team in the Modern Era (since 1900) and was one shy of the overall Modern Era record for most runs by one team in a game (30 by the Texas Rangers in 2007). It’s the most runs the Marlins have ever given up in a single game, snapping previous record of 25 runs allowed on June 27, 2003, at the Boston Red Sox.
It also comes after the Marlins posted 5-4 and 8-0 wins over the National League East’s top team.
So much for the series sweep.
So much for the opportunity to head into arguably the biggest homestand in recent memory with momentum on their side.
Atlanta hit seven home runs. Adam Duvall hit three of them, including a seventh-inning grand slam, and drove in nine runs. Ronald Acuna reached base on each of his first six plate appearances and scored four runs. Freddie Freeman, whose three-run homer in the third was his 1,500th career hit, drove in six runs.
With that, a reminder: While a massive blowout of historical proportions, it also only goes down as one loss. The Marlins, at 19-19, are still in playoff positioning. They are one-and-a-half games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for second place in the NL East and three-and-a-half games behind the Braves (25-18) for the top spot in the division. Miami also went 3-3 on a road trip against the Tampa Bay Rays and the Braves.
With that said, the Marlins will need to forget this one quickly. Miami plays seven games against the Phillies over the next five days to kick off their critical 11-day, 15-game homestand at Marlins Park.
“This game gets washed pretty quickly,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “... We have to get over this and do it fast.”
The implosion began in the bottom of the second inning. Fourteen hitters came to the plate. Eleven runs scored. Three home runs. One challenge call that could have mitigated a lot of this had it gone the Marlins’ way.
The full recap of that frame:
▪ Dansby Swanson leads off with a single against Pablo Lopez, who then loaded the bases with back-to-back walks to Austin Riley and Duvall.
▪ Ozzie Albies drives in the first run with a groundout to Garrett Cooper at first base. One out. Riley moves to third. Duvall moves to second.
▪ Ender Inciarte hits a game-tying sacrifice fly that scores Riley. Duvall advances to third base, sliding under a tag from Brian Anderson. The Marlins challenge the call. The play stands.
“I thought we got out of it there with that replay,” Mattingly said. “We thought he was, no, he was out at third. That cost us like 10 runs right there missing that. That was frustrating. After that, it got out of hand. ... That costs you in a game like tonight — it gets out of hand, no doubt —... but that call does cost you 10 runs.”
▪ Acuna Jr. walks on seven pitches, Freeman and Marcell Ozuna hit back-to-back RBI singles and Travis d’Arnaud hits a three-run home run. Five more runs score. Lopez’s night is done. Jordan Yamamoto, recalled to work out of the bullpen in long relief for situations precisely like this, enters the game.
▪ Yamamoto, who had an 11.42 ERA and 2.42 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) over three starts this year before being optioned, gives up singles to Swanson and Riley and then home runs to Duvall and Albies to allow four more runs to cross before getting Inciarte to ground out to first to end the inning.
With that, the Braves became the first team to score 11 runs in an inning since, coincidentally, the Marlins did it to the Brewers on June 4, 2019. Lopez coincidentally also started on the mound for the Marlins in that game.
Yamamoto ultimately gave up 13 total runs (12 earned) in 2 2/3 innings and became just the third reliever in baseball history (since 1901) to pitch fewer than three innings and allow at least 13 runs. The others: Vin Mazzaro (May 16, 2011) and Hugh Canavan (July 6, 1918).
“I hope he’s OK. He’s healthy. That’s why he was here, to protect us,” Mattingly said. “He did the best we could. That’s what we talked to him about. ... I told him I was going to run him out of pitches.”
It undid what the Marlins produced in the top half of the inning, scoring two runs on a Jorge Alfaro RBI single and Jazz Chisholm RBI triple to open scoring.
Give Miami this: The offense continued to produce despite facing an insurmountable deficit. Lewis Brinson hit a three-run home run in the third. Chisholm hit a solo shot to spark a three-run fourth. Alfaro, who moved from catcher to right field in the sixth inning, added an RBI single in the seventh. The nine runs scored were the fourth most for the Marlins this season.
“For a game like that, at the plate, I felt like our guys, they pretty much played to the last out,” Mattingly said.
But their production looked minuscule in comparison to the Braves, who kept piling on after their 11-run second. They scored two in the third, three in the fourth, six in the fifth, three in the sixth and four in the seventh to break their single-game record of 23 set on Sept. 2, 1957, against the Chicago Cubs. They were the Milwaukee Braves back then.
This story was originally published September 09, 2020 11:24 PM.
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