SAN DIEGO
Don Mattingly has made it clear: Moral victories need to be a thing of the past for the Miami Marlins.
So the manager is not taking solace in staying competitive through the first two games of this four-game road series against the San Diego Padres.
The Marlins lost. Again. Simple as that.
Miami’s skid is now at six consecutive games following Friday’s 3-2 loss. This includes a franchise-record five straight losses decided by one run and it comes on the heels of the club winning seven consecutive games — a feat the Marlins had not accomplished since 2016.
Keeping games close is not the standard they are striving for at this point. Not in Year 5 of this rebuild. Not after bolstering the lineup over the offseason. Not after showing that, even when the team wasn’t fully clicking, it could rattle off a week-long win streak during a stretch that including series with the Atlanta Braves and Seattle Mariners before this slide began.
“I think we’re at a point where we don’t want to say ‘Oh, we only lost by a run,’” Mattingly said. “We don’t want that.”
Whether they want them or not, those close losses have come often this year.
Miami is now 12-14 on the season. Half of those games have been decided by one run. Miami has been on the losing end of eight of those — the most in Major League Baseball so far this season — including all three of their games against the Arizona Diamondbacks and these past two games against the Padres at Petco Park.
In the first two games against the Diamondbacks on Monday and Tuesday, it was the offense showing up too late. The Marlins trailed by five in each of those games after six innings and then used a four-run rally in the seventh to narrow the gap but not completely close it. Miami lost both games 5-4.
On Wednesday, the Marlins rebounded from Elieser Hernandez’s sluggish fourth inning and scored four runs over the seventh and eighth innings to take a lead only to lose it in the ninth when Pavin Smith hit a go-ahead two-run home run against Anthony Bender. Miami loses 8-7.
On Thursday, Manny Machado hit a pair of home runs against Jesus Luzardo and the Marlins were shut out the final five innings after giving up the go-ahead run. Miami loses 2-1.
And on Friday, the Marlins put together what Mattingly said were “probably the best at-bats we’ve had as a team all year,” but only managed to score runs on Jesus Aguilar’s two-run home run in the sixth with a half-dozen hard-hit balls dying on the warning track.
“Baseball’s like that,” said Aguilar, who has driven in eight of Miami’s 18 runs over the last five games, with each of his run-scoring hits in those five games either cutting the Marlins’ deficit to one run or tying the game. “It’s a long season, a lot of ups and downs. Now we’re in a down.”
Mattingly has noted pregame Friday that the Marlins “haven’t really clicked on all cylinders yet.”
Miami’s starting pitchers, a strength over the past few years, are currently in a collective funk. They have just one quality start over the past six games — Jesus Luzardo held the Padres to two runs (the Machado home runs) over six innings on Thursday. The rest of the rotation collectively pitched to a 7.71 ERA over the other five starts, two by Sandy Alcantara and one apiece from Pablo Lopez, Elieser Hernandez and Trevor Rogers. Four of those five saw the starting pitcher removed before the end of the fifth inning.
Offseason acquisitions Jorge Soler and Avisail Garcia continue to struggle early. Soler is hitting .167 and has struck out in 32 of his first 111 plate appearances — a 28.8-percent strikeout rate. Garcia is hitting .174 with 28 strikeouts in 90 plate appearances — a 31.1-percent K rate.
The team as a whole is hitting .222 with runners in scoring position, the 10th-worst mark in the league.
Mattingly’s focus at this point is making sure the Marlins don’t dwell on the losses. They won’t get those games back. There are 136 more games to play.
“You’re worried about you’re whole club,” Mattingly said. “Usually, there’s going to be somebody who’s not swinging great, a pitcher that’s not going real well. You’re always worried about your club in one way or the other and how you shake it off. ... We’re not getting yesterday back.”
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