A Phillie Killer is Born: Marlins 8, Phillies 4

Admit it - the thought crossed your mind last night, right? That nasty little brainworm that crawls into your head when the Phillies score double-digit runs. You know exactly what I mean.

“They’re not gonna score a single run tomorrow.”

Well, they didn’t quite fall that flat but they didn’t exactly save much ammo for Tuesday night either. Add in a career night for the Marlins’ biggest offseason acquisition, more poor baserunning and a timely missed call and you have the makings of an 8-4 Phils loss at the hands of the Fish.

In the 2nd inning, our old buddy Jimmy Cigs proved that he will always be one of us by making a hilarious baserunning blunder, seemingly losing track of a single to center that was bobbled by Christian Pache who nailed Segura at second by a good twenty feet or so:

Aaron Nola looked pretty good through the first five innings outside of a knuckle-curve he hung for John Berti, who crushed his first home run of the year to center in the third inning. However, as was the case on Opening Day against the Rangers, a shaky start to an inning left Nola unable to recover.

Luis Arraez got the party started for the Marlins in the sixth with a one-out triple to right, scoring on a Jorge Soler double to left. After Yuli Gurriel scored Soler with a single to make it 3-0 Miami, Nola appeared to ring up Segura on a sinker low in the zone that home plate umpire Nate Tomlinson ruled a ball. With the inning kept alive, Segura singled to center and Marlins catcher Nick Fortes (who took a beating behind the dish tonight) extended the Marlins lead to 4-0 with an RBI single, chasing Nola after 5 ⅔ innings.

For his part, Marlins lefty Jesus Luzardo looked extremely sharp through five as well. After getting 20 whiffs in his last outing against the Twins, he got the Phillies to swing and miss 16 times tonight. However, like Nola, he started to fall apart in the sixth inning. Leading off the frame, Kyle Schwarber zapped a 112.7 MPH liner just inside the right field foul pole for a solo shot to put the Phils on the board:

Luzardo proceeded to load the bases for Bryson Stott, who rapped his second single of the day to left field, scoring two runs to cut the Marlins’ lead to one. That’s the good part. The bad is that Stott got a little too aggressive rounding first and was thrown out trying to retreat:

The Phillies are getting absolutely killed by baserunning blunders so far this year. Sunday’s game against the Reds comes to mind. It’s one thing to be aggressive on the basepaths, especially for guys like Trea Turner and Brandon Marsh. It’s another to have rallies killed and guys stranded for running through stop signs and losing track of the ball in the outfield. That’s got to improve if the Phillies want to stay afloat without big pieces of the lineup, let alone compete once they return.

In this case, that would be as close as the Phillies would get to making this thing competitive. In the top of the seventh, Arraez planted a Connor Brogdon fastball in the left field flower beds to make it 5-3. In the eighth, Miami put up three more including an RBI single by, who else, Luis Arraez, who etched his name into the Book of Pesky Marlins by becoming the first Fish to hit for the cycle in the team’s thirty years of existence. With his 4-for-5 showing on Tuesday, he boosted his batting average to an astronomical .537 over his team’s first twelve games.

Juan Pierre. Jeff Conine. Cody Ross. We might have a fourth face to carve into the Mount Rushmore of Phillie-killer Marlins after tonight’s performance from last year’s AL batting champion.

Oh, it was also Dollar Projectile Dog Night at the Bank tonight: