Rain suspends Miami Marlins’ series finale with Mets at Citi Field. What’s next?
The Miami Marlins’ series finale against the New York Mets at Citi Field on Sunday, following a two-hour and 10 minute rain delay, was suspended after just nine pitches.
The game will be resumed as the first game of a split doubleheader on Aug. 31 starting at 1:10 p.m. That game will be nine inning. The originally scheduled game for Aug. 31, set for a 7:10 p.m. first pitch, will be seven innings.
The weather forecast made it all but impossible to resume Sunday’s game. There is supposed to be steady rain in the Queens borough of New York throughout the night.
“There was a lot of conversation between [Marlins general manager] Kim [Ng] and the Mets and the league on what they thought they were going to get, what it looked like, if we were going to start, if we weren’t, all that type of stuff,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “Obviously weather is unpredictable.”
The rain, which started around 10 a.m., began to lighten up right before the game began and then quickly picked back up as players took the field.
Mets starting pitcher Marcus Stroman had thrown nine pitches and had a 2-0 count against Jesus Aguilar when the game was halted. Corey Dickerson led off the game with a groundball single down the third-base line and Starling Marte flew out to shallow right field.
“The field got out of hand quick,” Mattingly said. “It got a shine. It looked like it was puddling after two hitters. It’s obviously one of those that probably if everybody had to start over again, they wouldn’t start at all.”
Stroman expressed his frustration at the situation on Twitter about a half hour after the game was sent into a delay.
“This game should have never been started,” Stroman tweeted. “Not smart at all. Those conditions put everyone at risk. Beyond happy no players on either side were injured. Hate that I have to wait another 5 days to pitch again. That’s a miserable feeling.”
John Curtiss was announced as the Marlins’ starting pitcher with Miami going with a bullpen game approach due to the weather and potential of the game starting and stopping. Mattingly expected he would go no more than two or three innings.
“We don’t quite know where we’re gonna end up with this weather,” Mattingly said pregame about his decision to start Curtiss. “They’re obviously going to try to play, but the weather is still kind of up in the air. I just felt like it was the safest way to go for us.”
The Marlins (2-6) and Mets (2-3) have split the first two games of the series. The Mets won the opener 3-2 on Thursday with a controversial walk-off, bases-loaded hit-by-pitch when Michael Conforto was grazed a slider inside the strike zone that should have resulted in a strikeout. The Marlins evened the series with a 3-0 win on Saturday behind six shutout innings from Trevor Rogers and a Jazz Chisholm solo home run off Jacob deGrom sparking the offense.
The Marlins now travel to Atlanta for a four-game series with the Atlanta Braves that starts Monday. The projected starting pitching matchups for those four games:
▪ Monday: Sandy Alcantara vs Huascar Ynoa
▪ Tuesday: Pablo Lopez vs Max Fried
▪ Wednesday: Nick Neidert vs Charlie Morton
▪ Thursday: Trevor Rogers v Ian Anderson
They also potentially will have to play with a short bench that series.
About a half hour before first pitch, the Marlins optioned outfielder Lewis Brinson and added left-handed pitcher Daniel Castano to the active roster in anticipation that they were going to need a long-reliever out of the bullpen Sunday. Unless there’s an injury on the active roster, Brinson has to spend 10 days in the minors (or in this case, on the taxi squad or alternate training site) before being recalled.
“It’s frustrating,” Mattingly said, “from the standpoint of we’ll be going into the next series playing short a player. That’s a move that we wouldn’t have had to make at that point. We were going to have to make a move at some point. You don’t know what that is. Today’s is the one that happened. If it’s five days from now, it might be something different.
Jorge Alfaro’s lingering hamstring injury
Marlins catcher Jorge Alfaro was held out of the lineup for a fourth consecutive game while dealing with tightness in his left hamstring. Mattingly said they are being cautious with Alfaro but didn’t rule out the possibility that he could wind up on the injured list.
“When a player tells you he could play but and he can run at 75 percent, that’s not necessarily what you want to hear,” “Mattingly said, “because you also know that if they smell a hit or hit a chopper that they got to beat out for a hit, they’re gonna go before it tells him to stop or slow down. That’s where we’ve got to kind of protect him from just what happens in the game. He may have been able to get through the game and not hitting any ball and right away can kind of coast and stay under control. It’s when you get a little bit into asking that leg for more that we’re worried about. We’re trying to be cautious. We know we’ve got a long way to go. We’re trying to avoid missing him for four to six weeks with the hamstring and it puts us more of a more of a bind. I’d say we’re being cautious. He feels better every day but it doesn’t feel like he’s 100 percent.”
If Sunday’s game had been played in full, Chad Wallach would have been behind the plate for a fourth consecutive game. If an IL stint is required for Alfaro, the Marlins have Sandy Leon on their taxi squad for this road trip. The Marlins have an open 40-man spot so no corresponding move would have to be made.
