Coffee achievers: Marlins race past Cubs

CHICAGO -- Two hours before first pitch, Miami's rookies made a coffee run across the street from Wrigley Field. So it's only fitting that the Marlins hit the ground running, stealing a season-high five bases and watching Adam Duvall stay hot at the plate in Saturday afternoon's 11-1 win over the Cubs. No. 5 prospect Jesús Sánchez added his first career homer.

• Box score

Saturday’s outburst came less than 24 hours after a 10-2 win snapped a four-game skid in which the club scored just seven total runs. The last time the Marlins put up 10-plus runs in back-to-back games was Sept. 22-23, 2017 (11, then 12) in splitting a pair of matchups with the D-backs.

“We're playing well right now, not giving up runs and putting a lot of runs on the board,” said Duvall, who hit a pair of two-run homers. “We're going to have to win some tight ballgames down the road, but we want to try and score as many runs as we can to take the pressure off the pitcher, and that's what we've done the past couple of days.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr. got things started with a leadoff infield single to first base -- with a near elite sprint speed of 29.7 ft/sec -- then tallied his first stolen base since May 28. Three batters later, Duvall was sending a 94.8-mph sinker from Jake Arrieta over the right-field wall to cap a three-run frame. Miami entered Saturday with just 18 first-inning runs -- fewest in the Majors.

"I thought the first inning was big, not only for us to get on the board quick, and it settled [Pablo López] in and gave him a little breathing room right out of the gate," manager Don Mattingly said. "We were able to kind of just keep tacking on runs as the day went on, and I thought the first was huge to let this thing get started and just a reminder like last night's not quite over yet."

Duvall, whom Mattingly called "instant hot" after Friday’s performance, recorded his second consecutive multihomer game in the third inning. That blast pushed him ahead of the Padres' Fernando Tatis Jr. and teammate Jesús Aguilar for the NL lead in RBIs (52).

Here are more numbers on Duvall’s hot streak:

• He's the third Marlins player with back-to-back multihomer games, joining Giancarlo Stanton (2016) and Derrek Lee (2002). It was the 10th multihomer game of Duvall’s career, third of the season.

• He's the 14th player to have back-to-back multihomer games vs. the Cubs since at least 1901. The last was José Abreu of the White Sox on Aug. 21-22, 2020.

• He joins Gary Sheffield (September 1995) as the only Marlins players in team history to have 10 RBIs in a two-game span, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Sheffield drove in 11 runs in that stretch.

• He is the first Marlins player to have four homers and 10 RBIs in a two-game span.

• Duvall and Aguilar are the first Marlins teammates to reach 50 RBIs in 67 games or fewer since Alex Gonzalez and Mike Lowell in 2003.

• It marked the seventh time in club history a player has reached 50 RBIs in his first 61 games.

"I think I'm drinking more coffee today than I have in the past week," Duvall said. "What we showed today is from a whole what we strive for every day: It's being tough outs, tough at-bats, putting the barrel to the ball, driving the baseball, hitting the ball in the gap, hitting the ball over the fence. Collectively, we've been able to do that the past couple of days, and when you can do that, you can put a good number of runs up on the board, so that's important."

Chisholm set the tone, and the Marlins kept the pressure on the basepaths. Starling Marte nabbed a pair of bases, while Jorge Alfaro and Duvall collected one apiece. Miami is second in the National League with 46 stolen bases, but the club had only 11 in its past 20 games entering Saturday. The Marlins had gone 6-14 in that span, averaging 3.7 runs per game. Mattingly noted that steals depend on various factors like the players on base, a pitcher’s ability to hold runners or the catcher’s ability to control the ground game.

López, meanwhile, bounced back from his shortest start of the season (three innings last Sunday) to allow just one hit over seven scoreless innings, as Miami captured its first road series since May 18-20 in Philadelphia. Coming into the weekend, the Marlins were last in the NL East, while the Cubs were first in the NL Central.

“Regardless of the record, these guys, I do believe their staff has one of the best ERAs in baseball,” said Arrieta, who faced the Marlins once last season with the Phillies. “They have some nice pieces in their lineup. They can swing the bat. Wind blowing out with mistakes, they're going to make you pay just like anybody else will. Don't let the record fool you. These guys can play.”