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Source: FanGraphs
Attendance: 33,646
Hero of the Game: Christian Yelich (0.154 WPA)
Goat of the Game: Chad Qualls (-0.321 WPA)
Play of the Game: Russell Martin singled to left field in the tenth inning. Josh Harrison scored. Starling Marte advanced to second base. (-0.400 WPA)
Yesterday, the Miami Marlins got a good performance from Tom Koehler that was tainted by one big inning. Today, Jose Fernandez gave the team one of his lesser outings, but the Fish still held a good lead into the latter innings. Fernandez struck out five in the first three innings, but he also walked four during the outing. He only got six swings and misses in 101 pitches thrown, and he threw that many in just five innings, as he was unable to last long. Fernandez ended up giving up two runs as well.
But that did not matter because the Fish had two nice innings offensively. In the first inning, Christian Yelich walked and scored on a Giancarlo Stanton double. The Fish them scored Stanton on a Placido Polanco single to give the Fish an early 2-0 lead. That lead was advanced to 4-0 when Yelich hit his first career Major League home run off of Gerrit Cole. Yelich's first shot of his big league career came on an eighth pitch in the plate appearance, as he lined a low slider to the opposite field and got enough distance to get it out.
The Marlins' bullpen was asked to hold the lead, and once again they failed to do so. The Fish had a 4-2 lead in the seventh when Chad Qualls entered and allowed two singles and a walk to load the bases with no one out. Mike Dunn entered and forced a sacrifice fly that scored one runner, but then he failed to get lefty Pedro Alvarez out despite jumping ahead 0-2 in the count. Ryan Webb allowed the sacrifice fly to Gaby Sanchez to tie the game.
The pen messed up in the tenth as well, as Steven Ames came in for his second inning of work. He allowed a leadoff single to Josh Harrison and Harrison advanced on a sacrifice bunt. A few batters later, it was Russell Martin who singled home the game-winner as the Pirates sweep the Fish.