Fish Wrap - Marlins 3, Braves 8

It was a soggy night at Sun Life Stadium and the Marlins and Braves wrapped up their series with Ricky Nolasco facing off against Tim Hudson.

Both Nolasco and Hudson allowed a run in the first inning. Ricky gave up a one-out triple to Jason Heyward, and an RBI double to Chipper Jones to give the Braves the early lead, but the Fish answered back in the bottom of the frame. Hudson drilled Hanley Ramirez with a pitch, and Hanley promptly stole second, exchanged a few words with Timmy, and scored on a single by Jorge Cantu.

With two out in the fourth, Ricky allowed two more runs on four straight hits to the Braves. Yunel Escobar singled and scored on a double from David Ross. Tim Hudson and Martin Prado followed with singles to put the Braves up 3-1.

Ricky got back one of those runs when he helped out his own cause with a bases-loaded RBI single in the bottom of the inning, but one run was all the Fish could scrape out of the situation.

After Wednesday night's bullpen meltdown, it would have been nice for Ricky to toss a complete game, unfortunately, the weather wasn't feeling cooperative. The game went into an hour-long rain delay after the fourth, and it was a battle of the bullpens once play resumed.

The Fish put their sparkling new arms to work in the fifth, and Jay Buente tossed a scoreless inning before allowing a run to the Braves in the sixth on an RBI single by Martin Prado.

Taylor Tankersley was called on to get the last two outs of the inning, and after a nearly two-year hiatus from the Bigs, Tank struck out the pesky Heyward and got Hinske to pop it up to end the inning. Tim Wood pitched the seventh, and gave up an RBI double to Yunel Escobar to make it 5-2.

The Marlins had an opportunity to score some runs in the bottom of the seventh when Cogz and Gaby singled with no outs, but all they managed to scrape together was an RBI groundout from Hanley that plated one run.

Things unraveled for the Fish from there.

The struggles of Dan Meyer continued when he gave up two hits and walked FIVE in the eighth to allow three more runs to Atlanta. Dan loaded the bases on a single and two walks with nobody out, and induced a double play ball that scored a run. The ugly continued with a walk to Troy Glaus, an RBI single to Melky Cabrera, and two more free passes, including one with the bases loaded that put the Braves up 8-3.

The Fish didn't recover, and dropped the game and the series to Atlanta.