The Braves got back-to-back jacks from Freddie Freeman and A.J. Pierzynski and a solid four-inning relief appearance from Sugar Ray Marimon in his major league debut. It wasn’t nearly enough.
The damage had already been done by starter Trevor Cahill, who struggled mightily in his Braves debut, allowing four runs before he was pulled with one out in the third inning of a 8-2 loss to the Marlins Tuesday night before a sparse and rained-upon crowd of 15,765 at Turner Field.
It was only the second loss in eight games for the Braves and second win for the Marlins, whose 2-6 record includes a 1-4 mark against the Braves entering Wednesday’s series finale.
Cahill gave up five hits, four runs and three walks in 2 1/3 innings, and also hit a batter with one of his 57 pitches, a mere 33 of which were strikes. Acquired in a trade from the Diamondbacks in the last week of spring training, Cahill is 0-5 with a 9.40 ERA in his past seven regular-season starts dating to Aug. 26, lasting fewer than six innings in each.
“I’m going to chalk it up to he hasn’t pitched in a while,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of Cahill, who hadn’t faced hitters in about two weeks, other than a few innings in simulated-game conditions last week. “When a sinkerballer is giving up fly balls, that is not a good sign. I know we threw him a little (simulated) game a few days ago but it’s just one of those things. Now he goes on to prepare for his next start.
“Hopefully this start here today, these couple of innings will get him going a little bit.”
Cahill wouldn’t use the layoff as an excuse for his performance, and said nervousness from trying to make a good first impression wasn’t a factor.
“No, I felt good,” he said. “It didn’t seem like I hadn’t been out there in a while. I just left a couple pitches up in the first and the biggest thing was the walks. I got ahead of (Michael) Morse, too, and ended up hitting him. Tried to go inside and just went a little bit too far in. Other than that, I felt good. I just couldn’t get the ball down decently and a team like that is just trying to see me up and I left too many up.”
The Braves trailed 5-0 before Freeman and Pierzynski hit consecutive homers off Marlins starter Tom Koehler with one out in the fourth. In a span of three pitches they hit half as many homers as the team totaled in its first seven games.
Freeman hit his second homer of the season on a full-count fastball, driving it over the wall near the Braves bullpen in cavernous right-center. Pierzynski followed two pitches later with a pulled shot on a 1-0 change-up. The 38-year-old catcher also hit a two-run, game-winning homer at Miami April 8.
The backup/mentor to rookie Christian Bethancourt, Pierzynski has played in three games and gone 4-for-10 with two homers, three RBIs, a walk and a hit-by-pitch.
Marimon, called up from Triple-A Gwinnett on Monday to replace erratic reliever Juan Jaime, pitched four innings in his debut and allowed four hits, two runs and one walk with three strikeouts. He also prevented the Braves from overtaxing their bullpen on a night when they had to cover 6 2/3 innings due to Cahill’s early exit.
Marimon, a Colombian right-hander who’s a second cousin of Braves pitcher Julio Teheran, got a nice ovation from fans seated behind the Braves dugout when he left the field.
“He threw the ball over the plate,” Gonzalez said. “He threw a couple of nice changeups. His secondary pitches were good. When you’ve got these young kids, you always talk about (how) you (want to) put them in a low-risk situation where there’s not real high leverage — this is the second time in the homestand we’ve brought in a guy with the bases loaded who had never pitched in the big leagues. You’ve got tip your hat to him. Nice going for his first outing. He did a nice job for our club.”
The ravine that Cahill put the Braves in was too much to come back from, and an alarming Atlanta introduction for the pitcher. The Diamondbacks agreed to pay $6.5 million of Cahill’s $12 million salary this season to make the trade happen, and Arizona also gave the Braves a competitive-balance round B pick in the June draft, the 75th overall selection.
The Braves gave up minor league outfielder Josh Elander in the deal and figured it was worth $5.5 million for Cahill, after they scouted a few of his spring-training starts and came away satisfied that he could get back to being at least a serviceable starter. If Tuesday was any indication, he’s got a long way to go and the steps could be difficult for the Braves endure.
Cahill was 3-12 with a 5.61 ERA for the Diamondbacks last season and lost his rotation spot for a period.
Koehler’s buzzard’s luck against the Braves changed with a matchup against Cahill. Since the beginning of the 2014 season, Koehler had been 0-2 despite a 2.81 ERA in five starts against the Braves, all quality starts in which he allowed three or fewer runs in six or more innings, including four games in which he gave up two or fewer runs.
The Marlins, after scoring two or fewer runs while he was in all five of those previous games, racked up three runs Tuesday before Cahill recorded his second out.
After Dee Gordon led off the game with a slow-rolling infield single that got past the husky Cahill, Gordon stole second and Ichiro Suzuki drew a walk. Giancarlo Stanton lined a single to drive in the first run, and Martin Prado added a sacrifice fly.
When Michael Morse followed with a double off the center-field wall for a 3-0 lead, it looked like Cahill might not make it out of the first inning. But he retired the next two batters, induced an inning-ending double play grounder in the second, and got Ichiro on a flyball out to start the third to give Cahill six outs in a span of six batters.
That was the last bit of positivity he experienced Tuesday.
Cahill walked the next batter, Stanton, then gave up a single to Prado, hit Morse with a pitch to load the bases, and walked Marcell Ozuna to push the lead to 4-0. That was enough for Gonzalez, who brought in Marimon to clean up the mess.
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