The Miami Marlins almost blew it completely on Sunday afternoon in West Sacramento.
Considering how the game started, it would have been a truly stunning collapse.
Eury Pérez threw seven perfect innings on Sunday to help power the Marlins to a 9-8 win over the Athletics. But when he was pulled ahead of the eighth inning, the Marlins were up by eight runs and seemingly on their way to a blowout win.
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Marlins reliever Lake Bachar came in to replace Pérez to start the eighth inning. The perfect game that Pérez had started — he got all 21 hitters he faced out and tossed eight strikeouts in 92 pitches — was still intact even as fans at the ballpark were livid.
But immediately, Bachar walked the first batter he faced. The second batter, Josh Kuroda-Grauer, then hit a shallow single to right for the first hit. Just like that, it was all over.
By the end of the inning, a grand slam from the As had made it an 8-5 game.
The Athletics scored three more in the bottom of the ninth, too, thanks in part to a two-RBI single from Jonah Heim, who was fresh off his grand slam the inning prior. But closer Pete Fairbanks finally closed the game out and gave the Marlins, who added an extra run in the top of the inning, the one-run win.
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Now the Marlins, considering how many pitches he had thrown, likely never would have left Pérez in the contest despite the perfect game he was in the middle of. The 23-year-old has never thrown a complete game in his major league career, and the 92 pitches he threw on Sunday were the most he’s done since returning late last month from a leg injury. Perez went down in late May after his right hamstring spasms as he was stretching in the middle of a start.
But it’s fair to wonder if he could have pulled it off, given the opportunity. That, however, isn’t something Marlins manager Clayton McCollugh was willing to risk.
“He had it really going today, and I totally get it,” McCollugh said, via Fish On First’s Jeremiah Geiger. “There was a part of my heartstrings pulling at his opportunity to keep on going, but I think i have to think about Eury, one, and our organization, our team, and what’s best moving forward to give us a chance to continue to win games. We made more of a calculated decision of where he was with the pitch count to take him out.”
If Pérez would have been successful, it would have been the 25th perfect game in MLB history. New York Yankees starter Domingo Germán there the most recent one, also against the Athletics, back in 2023. The Marlins have never had a perfect game.
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If the Marlins had blown the game, it would have been nothing short of a disaster. But they held on and closed out the three-game sweep to push them to 49-42 on the year. Not only is the win in the books, but Pérez looks back to form after his injury.
