Jake Arrieta couldn’t seem to get out of the slump that marked his previous start.
Miami Marlins outfielder Adam Duvall had been on a tear in his previous 10 games.
For the Cubs, it proved to be an unfortunate confluence of cold hand and hot bat when Duvall tagged Arrieta for two two-run home runs and contributed to the right-hander’s exit after three innings during the Cubs’ ugly 11-1 loss Saturday.
“Not good enough, obviously,” Arrieta said. “Not what I intended to have happen today.”
Marlins starter Pablo Lopez allowed only one hit in seven innings, easily the right-hander’s strongest performance of the season and just the fifth time in 15 starts he has yielded fewer than four hits.
The Cubs have been outscored 21-3 in the first two games of the three-game series. They lost 10-2 on Friday night.
Jason Heyward, who had been scuffling with a .103 average in June, kept the Cubs from getting blanked. He homered off reliever Anthony Bass in the eighth, his first since May 17 against the Washington Nationals.
The Marlins hitters had no such problems, teeing off for four home runs. But no one in this series has come up bigger for Miami than Duvall.
In the span of about 18 hours, Duvall hit a grand slam and two-run homer during the Marlins’ 10-2 win Friday night, then added a pair of two-run homers in the first and third innings Saturday afternoon.
He’s the third players in Marlins history to notch back-to-back multihomer games, joining Giancarlo Stanton and Derrek Lee.
Arrieta’s eighth loss tied the Baltimore Orlioles’ Matt Harvey for the second most in the majors, one behind the Cincinnati Reds’ Luis Castillo
Arrieta failed to last longer than five innings for the seventh straight start and lasted fewer than five innings for the fourth time since April 30 at Cincinnati.
“I know the last two have not been good,” Ross said. “Outside of that, I thought there was the two-inning stint in San Francisco (with six earned runs) and one other bad one. “I think today the stuff was really good, I saw some 94s and 93s up there. It looked like it was in the middle of the plate.
“I didn’t see maybe a little bit more of a usage to the breaking stuff. He didn’t get to the breaking ball till later in the outing.”
Arrieta didn’t seem to have nearly the control issues from his previous outing, though you could fault his location and reliance on the sinker. The Marlins did a good job of putting whatever Arrieta offered into play, even good pitches that had some movement.
“When you got a contact-oriented group on the other side, that hasn’t fared well for us quite this year,” Ross said.
Arrieta said his stuff “was as good as it’s been in a long time.
“The first homer that Duvall hit, 0-2 pitch, it actually was a really nice sinker off the plate,” he said. “I didn’t really know exactly where the location was until I saw the replay. It’s about a ball off the plate at 95, and he hit the opposite way pretty deep.
“That’s pretty much exactly where I wanted to put it. Could I have thrown something else? Sure. But he could also have taken it or swung and missed. Got to give him credit for swinging the bat well there. He’s obviously hot.”
Arrieta exacerbated his problems by not posing much of a threat to baserunners.
The battery of Arrieta and José Lobatón allowed four stolen bases, two during a three-run first-inning. The Marlins had five steals in the game, the most on the Cubs since the Washington Nationals swiped seven on June 27, 2017.
“There’s a lot of things that could play into that,” Ross said. “Without being on (the Marlins’) side, there’s times to the plate, maybe they had a tell on Jake, maybe they could see Loby’s signs.
“Maybe they just have a lot of really fast guys that this is what they do.”
Starling Marte reached on a fielder’s choice and Jazz Chisholm reached third safely on Kris Bryant’s error, then Chisholm scored on Jesús Aguilar’s groundout to put the Marlins up 1-0.
Duvall’s homer to right off an Arrieta sinker scored Marte in the first, then Jon Berti sacrificed in the second to play Jorge Alfaro.
Duvall drove in Marte again in the third with homer to left off Arrieta’s curve despite Arrieta being up 1-2 in the count.
“Not a good spot,” Arrieta said. “That was a mistake.”
The Cubs bullpen had its share of problems too.
Cory Abbott relieved Arrieta in the fourth, and an inning later he and Lobatón allowed Duvall to steal second. The Marlins capitalized on another gaffe when Duvall scored on Jesús Sánchez’s infield pop that dropped between Bryant and Lobatón.
Jon Berti scored on Abbott’s wild pitch in the sixth, and Jesús Sánchez blasted Rex Brothers’ fastball 370 feet to left field.
Lewin Diaz added a two-run homer in the eighth.
The Cubs last lost two straight games in late April, to the Milwaukee Brewers.
This current skid has has some troubling signs. The Cubs allowed at least 10 runs in home games on consecutive days for the first time since Aug. 18-19, 2015, against the Detroit Tigers.
They have lost five of six, and opponents have scored at least five runs in four of those games. Meanwhile the Cubs have been held to two runs or fewer in all but one of their last seven games.
But the rails really come off in these last two losses to the Marlins.
“This is an easy game for us to really just flush it and forget about it, move on,” said second baseman Eric Sogard, who pitched the ninth inning and retired three batters on flyouts. “We didn’t play well on either side of the ball today. They certainly took advantage of all those mistakes.”
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