Everyone talks about Josh Johnson or even Ricky Nolasco, though not recently on Ricky's part, as being the stopper of losing streaks. But if you were to look at the games in May, the true stopper is Anibal Sanchez. Yes, you read that right. Anibal has had the most success of any starter in the month of May. Now there are many ways to calculate success, but when it comes down to it, in his six starts in May he didn't give up more than 2 ER in any of them and was fortunately never saddled with a loss. Which is saying a lot considering how the Marlins bats have gone into a coma.
Fortunately for Fish fans everywhere, Anibal took the mound yesterday afternoon. The Marlins were on a four game losing streak and in fact , the last game the Marlins had won was Sanchez's start against Atlanta. So it was up to Anibal to help right the ship. And he did not disappoint.
Anibal threw 6.2 innings of shutout ball, only allowing 3 hits while striking out 7. Though he did walk 3 that didn't matter much at all in the end. Tankersley, Hensley and Nunez took the game home to complete the shutout. And it was a darn good thing they did, because the Marlins hitters sure as heck didn't do much.
The Marlins scored their only run when Hanley Ramirez singled and stole second, Dan Uggla walked, and Ronny Paulino hit a ground ball with eyes through the right-side of the infield to score Hanley.
It was good to break the losing streak, but fellows with the bats, that was pathetic. If the pitchers have to pitch shutouts in order to win the game, that is some pretty sucky hitting.