MIAMI — Eury Perez’s best wasn’t quite good enough for the Miami Marlins on Tuesday.
Even though the rookie starting pitcher put together another gem and perhaps the best start of his young career, the Marlins were locked in a scoreless tie with the Toronto Blue Jays when he exited the game after six innings and their bats ultimately let down the 20-year-old Dominican. The Blue Jays scored two runs on a pair of fluky hits in the top of the seventh inning to win, 2-0, in Miami and end the Marlins’ five-game winning streak.
Miami (42-32) is still 10 games above .500, though, and in the top wild-card spot with only seven games left until the halfway point of the regular season.
The Marlins also got yet another encouraging start from Perez. The right-handed pitcher just keeps getting better, which shouldn’t be surprising, given his age, but is sort of hard to believe just because of how good he has already been.
When he took the mound for his eighth MLB start Tuesday, Perez already had an ERA under 2.00, multiple games with six-plus strikeouts and a rapidly growing case for an MLB Rookie of the Year Award, and still he found a way to improve on everything he had already done.
The starter went six innings and held Toronto to just three hits without a single walk or run. He set a new career high with nine strikeouts and brought his ERA down to 1.54. He has never had a bad moment yet in the Majors — his ERA has never even sat at 4.00 at the end of any start and he still went 4 1/3 innings with only three earned runs last month in his worst outing so far — and yet he’s still improving.
His ERA has gone down for five straight starts and he gave up just one run across 27 innings — good for a 0.33 ERA — in those five games. His seven earned runs through eight starts are the fewest ever for a 20-year-old in the live-ball era and he only let one batter into scoring position in his latest gem.
The lone threat Perez faced came in the fifth inning, when Blue Jays third baseman Matt Chapman smacked a double off the wall in center field and got to third base on an error. With one out and the go-ahead run just 90 feet from home, Perez never flinched. He struck out Danny Jansen on three pitches — dropping the Toronto catcher to his knees on the second one — and then got Blue Jays first baseman Spencer Horwitz to ground out to end the inning, getting a standing ovation from the 9,809 at loanDepot park as he went back to the dugout after escaping the jam.
Perez threw 80 pitches and 59 went for strikes. He got multiple strikeouts with three different pitches — four with his slider, three with his four-seam fastball and two with his change-up — and averaged 97.8 mph with his fastball and 90.5 mph with his change-up.
“He’s maturing every start, every bullpen, every day he’s here,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “I don’t think the stuff is the same. I think it’s getting better every time out.”
The game — another close one for Miami, which has already played 23 one-run games so far this season — ultimately came down to the bullpen and two fluky hits by Toronto.
The Marlins and Blue Jays were still stuck in a scoreless tie into the eighth inning, when relief pitcher Tanner Scott entered, struck out Jansen to start the top of the frame and then gave up three straight hits.
First, Toronto utility infielder Santiago Espinal laced a pinch-hit double down the third-base line. Blue Jays utility man Ernie Clement then came in as another pinch hitter and blooped a single out to center field to bring Espinal home for the game-winning run. Toronto outfielder George Springer followed it up with a broken-bat single and the Blue Jays took a 2-0 lead.
Although it threatened in the eighth and ninth innings, Miami never pushed a runner across home plate. The Marlins got runners on the corners with one out in the bottom of the eighth, only outfielder Jesus Sanchez grounded into a double play as a pinch hitter to end the inning. Outfielder Bryan De La Cruz hit a two-out double in the ninth, only first baseman Yuli Gurriel flew out to center to end the game.
Luis Arraez led off the bottom of the ninth inning with a chance to push his batting average back above .400 with a hit, but lined out to left.
The infielder is now batting .398 after briefly getting back up to .400 with a 5-for-5 performance Monday and up to .401 by starting 1 of 2 on Tuesday.
