The Marlins had the kind of August that leaves a team with work still to do and little margin left to waste.
Miami entered Monday night trying to finish the month above .500 for only the second time all season, but that chance disappeared in a 6-3 loss to the Nationals at Nationals Park. A three-run lead slipped away, Daylen Lile did the damage with a pair of two-run homers, and the Marlins finished August at 13-14.
Now it’s September, and the picture is plain: the Marlins are 69-69 with 24 games left, four behind the Padres for the final NL Wild Card. The Padres also won Monday night. Miami heads to Kansas City for the second stop of its second-to-last road trip.
“We don’t have a ton of baseball ahead of us, but we have enough,” said Marlins first baseman Kyle Stowers, who delivered a two-run single in the fourth. “Just keep going, and we’ve got a big stretch coming up.”
That stretch will have to come with more than flashes. The Marlins dropped three of four in Washington, even after entering the series on an eight-game winning streak against the Nationals. The offense never found a steady rhythm across the four games, scoring 15 runs and getting to the scoreboard in only five of 36 innings.
Miami did jump out early Monday, then briefly looked like it might carry the same late surge that fueled Sunday’s six-run ninth. But the lead didn’t last.
Lile kept changing the temperature of the game. Clayton McCullough twice brought in a reliever specifically to deal with the left-handed hitter, and twice Lile won the matchup anyway.
He first pulled Jack Ralston’s 2-2 slider the other way in the fifth, cutting the Nationals’ deficit to 3-2. Ralston had entered for Ryan Gusto, who gave Miami 4 1/3 innings and allowed four singles and two walks.
“I trust the team’s mission to win the game and then put us in the best situation to do so,” said Gusto, who was charged with one run and threw 49 of 69 pitches for strikes. “I feel like the bullpen does a great job, and we have a really good bullpen. So I can never knock putting them in the game to continue putting up zeros to give us the best chance to win.”
Then came the seventh, when Lile jumped Josh Ekness’ inside heater and launched it off the face of the second deck in right to put Washington ahead 4-3 and ignite a four-run inning. The Nationals kept rolling after that, scoring again on Esteury Ruiz’s throwing error from right field and Brady House’s RBI single.
McCullough didn’t hide from the scrutiny that comes with those calls.
“You go through a lot of decisions each day, and I understand the criticism and the scrutiny when those decisions don’t work out,” McCullough said. “We’re always discussing the thought process and preparedness part of it.
But you know what? Sometimes you get beat.”
The Marlins still had a chance to answer. Otto Lopez, Griffin Conine and Javier Sanoja singled to load the bases with no outs in the eighth, but Erik Tolman shut the door. He struck out Stowers, got Leo Jiménez to bounce into a 4-3 double play, and then stayed on to finish the ninth for a six-out save.
Stowers said the issue isn’t panic so much as the lineup not putting together enough complete at-bats.
“I don’t think guys are pressing … in the sense of trying to do too much, per se, or feeling the pressure,” Stowers said of the offensive struggles in D.C. “I just don’t think we’re stringing together our best at-bats of the year right now.
Why that is exactly? All of us have kind of got to look individually at what we can do better on a nightly basis.”
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