The Miami Marlins had enough pop to keep Monday’s game alive for a while, but one ugly inning turned the night into another loss and another step backward in the standings.
Miami fell 8-5 to the Houston Astros at Daikin Park after surrendering six runs in the second inning. The defeat was the Marlins’ seventh straight and dropped them to 52-49, knocking them out of the final National League wild-card spot.
The Marlins actually struck first. After Jakob Marsee worked a two-out walk in the second, Joe Mack jumped on a Ronel Blanco pitch and sent it 409 feet to right field for his eighth home run, giving Miami a 2-0 lead.
Houston flipped the game in a hurry. Taylor Trammell started the comeback with an RBI single, then Jeremy Peña blew it open with his second career grand slam to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 Astros lead. Yordan Alvarez followed with a solo shot to cap the six-run inning against Janson Junk.
Junk stayed in long enough to cover four innings, but the damage was done: six runs on five hits and three walks. Blanco, meanwhile, was making his first start since May 2025 after Tommy John surgery and struck out eight over 4 2/3 innings, even while giving up two home runs.
Miami tried to answer in the fourth when Liam Hicks launched a two-run homer to trim the gap to 6-4. It was his team-leading 14th homer, and his 60 RBIs also lead the club. Through a rough stretch, Hicks has still been one of the Marlins’ steadiest run producers.
But Alvarez shut the door on the comeback. He added another solo homer off Lake Bachar in the fifth and finished 3-for-4 with his fifth multi-homer game of the season.
That night pushed Alvarez to the top of the American League in batting average (.324), home runs (33) and RBIs (75), keeping him squarely in the Triple Crown conversation. After injuries interrupted much of his 2025 season, he has put himself back in the middle of the sport’s best-hitter discussion.
He’s been especially hot in July, hitting .382/.453/.836 with seven home runs and 15 RBIs. Houston needed every bit of that, too, after arriving Monday on a four-game losing streak and struggling to find consistent offense.
Miami got one last push in the ninth on an RBI single from Heriberto Hernández, but Josh Hader finished it off. With the skid now at seven games, every remaining night matters even more for the Marlins as they try to stay in the race.
Tyler Phillips gets the next shot at stopping the slide Tuesday against Tatsuya Imai. Phillips is 2-4 with a 3.48 ERA, while Imai is 5-4 with a 6.06 ERA. Houston, meanwhile, can use the win as a springboard before heading into a road series against the Chicago White Sox.
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What makes the move interesting is the timing. De La Cruz has been swinging the bat well in Triple-A this season, and Philadelphia clearly saw enough to give him a chance to help right away. Whether he sticks in a crowded Phillies picture is the next question, but for now he is back on a contender's radar and back in a division where his name is already familiar. [Read more 🡒]
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Yordan Alvarez May Have Just Changed The Astros MVP Debate
The Marlins ran into Yordan Alvarez at exactly the wrong time, and Houston needed every bit of the damage he did. Alvarez went 3-for-4 and launched two home runs in the Astros 8-5 win, a performance that helped snap a four-game losing streak and reminded everyone why his name keeps surfacing in the American League MVP conversation.
Those blasts pushed him to 32 and 33 homers on the year, putting him in a tie for the major league lead and giving him a grip on several AL offensive categories. ESPN now lists Alvarez as the favorite for the award, and with the way he has carried Houstons lineup, the debate may have shifted from whether he belongs in the race to how much separation he can create before the season winds down. [Read more 🡒]