Peters shines in debut, but Marlins lose fifth straight

The Marlins (66-68) could not finish the job on Friday evening, losing in devastating fashion to the Phillies (51-83) by a score of 2-1. The Fish have now lost five in a row and have halted any momentum they had gained in the wild card chase.

Dillon Peters made his major league debut on Friday, but it sure didn't seem like it. He went seven strong striking out eight Phillies batters. Only six baserunners reached in his first game in the show. Not too shabby.

The Marlins scored their only run without hitting the ball out of the infield. Dee Gordon led off the first inning with an infield single. After a wild pitch, Nick Pivetta walked both Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich. Pivetta would then retire both Marcell Ozuna and J.T. Realmuto before allowing Gordon to score on another wild pitch.

Things were pretty quiet after that. After Peters gave the Marlins seven great innings of work, Don Mattingly turned to Kyle Barraclough in the eighth inning. He worked around a one-out single to pitch a scoreless inning.

The Marlins were three outs away from breaking their four game losing streak and picking up a much needed win. But it just didn't happen. Brad Ziegler (L, 1-3) came into the game and gave up a first pitch double to Maikel Franco. Ziegler would then get Nick Williams to groundout to first, but that allowed Franco to move 60 feet away from scoring the tying run. After walking Pedro Floriman, Jorge Alforo flared singled to right field to tie the game up at one. Very disappointing.

With Floriman now at third base, Andres Blanco came to the plate looking to give the Phillies the lead. He did exactly that. He hit a slow rolling ball to second base and Gordon had no choice but to throw the ball to first. The Phillies took the lead and that was that.

The Marlins went down in order in the bottom of the ninth and that was all she wrote for this one. A tough pill to swallow and another game the Marlins bullpen could not finish off. That has been an issue for this team all season long.

While it is fair to give Ziegler the blame for this loss, the Marlins offense did not score enough runs to back the strong performance by Peters. Four hits was not enough. Scoring only one run with the bases loaded and nobody out in the first inning was not enough. You can't expect to win many games while only putting a single run on the board.

I would advise you ignore this Fangraphs win expectancy graph.

The two teams will be back in action on Saturday at 7:10 PM. It will be Dan Straily for the Marlins and Aaron Nola for the Phillies.