Florida pinch hitter Brett Carroll is congratulated by his teammates after his 3-run homer in the 8th inning gave the Marlins the lead in a 14-7 win over the Diamondbacks on Thursday.
Five wins in a row. And with a 7-0 lead over the Florida Marlins after 5 innings, you had to feel pretty confident that the D-Backs would make it 6 in a row.
Nope!
The Marlins rallied, and rallied, and then rallied some more and beat the Diamondbacks 14-7 in the opener of a 4-game series at Chase Field.
The 8th inning that has bitten Arizona so many times in the past this season, reared its ugly head again. Except this time, it hadn’t brushed it’s teeth in a week and didn’t have any makeup on. Hideous.
The Marlins scored 10 runs in the inning, highlighted by pinch-hitter Brett Carroll’s three-run blast off of lefty reliever Scott Schoeneweis to give Florida an 8-7 lead. But the Fish didn’t stop there, adding 6 more runs, and violently ending the Diamondbacks’ 5-game winning streak.
The game wasn’t without bright spots for the Diamondbacks. Justin Upton broke out of a 1 for 30 slump with a 2-run homer in the first inning to open the scoring for the D-Backs. Upton also added two singles in the game.
Yusmeiro Petit had his best start of the year for the Diamondbacks, pitching 5 shutout innings before running into trouble and allowing 3 runs in the 6th inning.
But manager A.J. Hinch summed it up best when he called the 8th inning “disastrous”.
Diamondbacks’ ace Dan Haren will take the hill on Friday to try to start a new winning streak for Arizona. He’ll be faced by Ricky Nolasco, who has won his last 4 decisions after a disastrous start to the season.
