\n\tMIAMI \u2013 In what was expected to be a tightly contested pitcher\u2019s duel on Thursday night, the Miami Marlins fell behind immediately and never recovered, dropping their third consecutive game to the Atlanta Braves. With the loss, Miami fell to a season-worst seven games under .500 and now sits alone in last place in the NL East.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen asked if the team needs to start doing things differently, manager Clayton McCullough<\/a> said, \u201cNo, we\u2019re going to keep going, continue with what we\u2019re doing and get ourselves ready for a new series. Things will turn. When? I don\u2019t know, but we\u2019ll hang in there and be okay.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tThe season is still relatively young, but it has reached the point where front offices begin evaluating their clubs to determine what changes need to be made and which direction they should take in the coming months. In Miami\u2019s case, the current stretch is making those decisions increasingly difficult for the front office.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThe theme of May has been falling behind early and often. In 19 games this month, Marlins starters entered Thursday with a first-inning ERA above 11 \u2014 by far the worst mark in Major League Baseball. The next closest team owns a 6.15 ERA in the opening frame. On Thursday, that troubling trend continued, even with Sandy Alcantara<\/a> on the mound.\n<\/p>\n \n\tAfter Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr.<\/a> reached on an infield single, Michael Harris II<\/a> launched his 10th home run of the season to dead center field \u2014 the first of his two home runs on the night. The homer came on a 1-2 changeup.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSome teams are different,\u201d Alcantara said. \u201cThey\u2019re at the top of the division, winning a lot of games because they\u2019re very aggressive and trying to score runs right away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhen asked about the frustration within the pitching staff during this rough stretch, Alcantara admitted it hasn\u2019t been easy.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s hard because when I\u2019m out there, I want us to win games consistently, but we\u2019ve gotta stay together. We know what we\u2019re capable of, and sometimes we can compete against anyone, but we\u2019re just not getting the results right now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tAlcantara surrendered another solo home run in the second inning, this time to Mike Yastrzemski<\/a>, before settling in during the middle innings and keeping Atlanta off the board until the sixth. That\u2019s when Acu\u00f1a Jr. delivered a two-run single that effectively sealed the game for Atlanta.\n<\/p>\n \n\tAlcantara\u2019s final line: 6 IP, 9 H, 6 ER, 0 BB, 3 SO. He threw 94 pitches, 68 for strikes.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m not happy about it,\u201d the Dominican right-hander said of his performance. \u201cI think I could have done better. I left some pitches over the middle early, and they took advantage.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\tThe Marlins were able to keep the game relatively close thanks to a trio of solo home runs \u2014 two from Kyle Stowers<\/a> and one from Owen Caissie<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve gotta keep believing. We know we\u2019ve gotta get through this as a team and keep fighting every day as we continue to move forward,\u201d Miami\u2019s ace said postgame.\n<\/p>\n \n\tFollowing the series loss, Miami will welcome the New York Mets to loanDepot park for a weekend series. Right-hander Eury P\u00e9rez<\/a> will look to get his season on track against Tobias Myers<\/a>. First pitch is scheduled for 7:10 p.m.\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2013 In what was expected to be a tightly contested pitcher\u2019s duel on Thursday night, the Miami…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3816,25082,28,24218,20248,123,125,124,115,30558,8561],"class_list":["post-280602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-baseball","tag-blog","tag-florida","tag-forum","tag-marlins","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-news","tag-rumors","tag-schedule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}