Marlins 3, Dodgers 0: Urena’d

The bad news is that the Dodgers got shut down by a guy who came into today with a 5.54 ERA, started the season as a reliever and, after spending a month in the minors getting stretched out, hadn’t lasted more than six innings in any of his eight starts.

The good news is that, barring some kind of miraculous wild card comeback by Miami, the Dodgers won’t have to play the Marlins again this year.

Both starting pitchers faced the minimum the first time through the order. This happened in spite of Kenta Maeda giving up a leadoff single on the first pitch he threw to Dee Gordon, since he was then erased when Ichiro Suzuki grounded into a double play. The first three innings of the game took a mere 36 minutes to play.

Things slowed down considerably in the bottom of the fourth. After Maeda struck out Gordon, the Marlins brought in a run on three straight singles, and another run on a Justin Bour sacrifice fly. A couple of infield singles loaded the bases, but a fly out to Andre Ethier (his first putout of the season) ended that particular threat. The Fish would tack on another run in the sixth inning thanks to a two-error play, in which Josh Reddick‘s fielding error allowed Martin Prado to take third base, and a throwing error by Corey Seager sent him home.

While a two-out base hit by Joc Pederson in the top of the fifth erased concern of a perfect game (and how — pardon me — rich would that have been after the Rich Hill hullabaloo yesterday), the Dodgers still seemed mostly flummoxed by Marlins righty Jose Urena. He allowed back-to-back one-out singles to Corey Seager and Adrian Gonzalez in the top of the seventh, but escaped unscathed when Yasmani Grandal hit into a double play.

Urena wound up going eight and two-thirds innings, striking out four and walking none in his four-hit, no-run effort. He retired the first two batters in the ninth inning before giving up a single to Reddick. With the left-handed heart of the Dodgers order coming up, old friend Don Mattingly opted to remove his starter after 108 pitches. Closer A.J. Ramos came in, and got Seager to ground out to end it.

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The Dodgers now head to New York for what has the potential to be a fun series with the Yankees. Tomorrow, Jose De Leon faces Bryan Mitchell. It’ll be De Leon’s second career major league start, and it’ll be Mitchell’s second major league start of this season. First pitch is 4:05 PM Pacific.