Miami Marlins at New York Mets

Janson Junk got the ball for Miami and Kodai Senga took the mound for New York when the two clubs reconvened at 7:10 PM ET, a pitching matchup nobody would've circled back in spring training. Senga was a rotation afterthought two months into this season, demoted to the bullpen after his ERA ballooned past 10, and he was only starting because Freddy Peralta got scratched with trade buzz swirling around him. Junk, meanwhile, has quietly turned into a stabilizer for a Miami staff that's been gutted by injuries all year.

New York is already picking up the pieces without Juan Soto (calf) and Mark Vientos (fractured hand), and leaning on an emergency starter only widened the gaps in the lineup. Miami has its own list — Max Meyer, Robby Snelling and Adam Mazur are all out long-term — but the Marlins have leaned on rehab reinforcements like Owen Caissie trending back toward the majors. None of that stopped New York from opening as the moneyline favorite, which says plenty about how far this season has drifted for the Mets.

None of the pregame math mattered once the fifth inning hit. Miami sent a parade of hitters to the plate and put up 4 runs in that frame alone, then tacked on another in the sixth to turn a scoreless slog into a laugher. Senga worked into that fifth but the damage piled up in a hurry, extending one of the roughest stretches by a former All-Star this franchise has watched in years.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
MIA	0	0	0	0	4	1	0	0	0	5	8	1
NYM	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	2	7	0

New York clawed a run back in the fifth and added another in the seventh, and the Mets actually outplayed Miami defensively — no errors to the Marlins' one — but it wasn't nearly enough to erase that middle-innings collapse. The offense mustered 7 hits and never threatened to turn this into the kind of shootout the total was built for.

Miami is scraping its way back to .500 on the strength of stretches like this one, even with half its bullpen on the injured list and a front office that's decided not to be a buyer or a seller this deadline. New York's win the night before now looks like more of an outlier than a turning point — this roster is still waiting on Soto and Vientos, and until then, nights like Friday are the more likely outcome.

Sources