Poor pitching + poor defense is the recipe for an 0-7 start

MIAMI, FL —Trying to avoid a homestand sweep, the Marlins looked to A.J. Puk on the mound as he faced a team he is familiar with going back to his time with the A's. A rocky start by Puk in the 1st inning ended up being the difference-maker, as the Fish had to play from behind all game long and fell to 0-7 on the season. 

Puk's second start of the year did go not the way he would had hoped for as he his final line was: 4 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 5 SO. Most of the damage came in the 1st when Puk gave up a double to Luis Rengifo and a pair of hits to LA on his way to a 34-pitch inning. Manager Skip Schumaker acknowledged the rough first inning for Puk, but also the fact that he was able to settle in after that. "Tough first inning, a little erratic, 30-plus pitches is never ideal in the first but then he figured something out later in the game and hopefully, he can use that moving forward this season."

Puk's velocity on all four of his primary pitches on Wednesday were down as he saw a decrease of more than 1.1 mph. The sweeper ended up giving Puk the most trouble as the velocity was down almost 3.0 mph as well as only two called strikes on 25 pitches on his sweeper. On the other end for Puk, his fastball did most of the damage, as he used it 36% of the time while getting 14 swings on it. 

Defensively, the Marlins did Puk no favors as their mistimed jumps, fielding errors, and lackadaisical outfield routes bled into a miserable 0-7 start to the season.  The tweet below was a great example of how poor the defense was as Vidal Bruján brought his glove up to quickly on a grounder, which ended up resulting in two runs coming across for the Halos. Skip took note of the team's poor defense. "Today we got out but kicked. We shot ourselves in the foot like I said earlier with some defensive miscues".

Jazz Chisholm Jr, had a miscue/Injury scare in the 5th when going for Miguel Sanó's deep fly ball at the wall. Jazz came down on one leg and looked to be in pain as it took him a few minutes to get up after the awkward landing. Jazz stayed in for the rest of the game but it might be something to pay attention to going into the Cardinals series.

Aside from a productive 3rd inning where two runs came aboard thanks to singles from Jake Burger and Josh Bell —which also included a double from Avisail Garcia —the Marlins only registered one hit in the other eight innings, demonstrating the lack of offense being produced to start the season. Miami continues their dreadful start to the year as one of only two winless teams left, with the other being the division rival Mets who are 0-4 with multiple postponed games. 0-7 is not the start anyone could have imagined, but maybe looking closer at the roster before the season began, a winless start might not have been too crazy of a possibility. 

To close out, I usually write my three stars of the game, but today, there were none. Multi-strikeout game for Arraez, poor pitching, poor defense, and a total of four hits was the recipe for this loss. The Marlins are now headed on a road trip which includes the home opener for the Cardinals and a date with the red-hot Yankees in the Bronx.

Thursday's matchup in St. Louis features Ryan Weathers (0-1, 6.75 ERA) vs. Lance Lynn (0-0, 0.00 ERA).