Weathers working on efficiency after mixed home debut

MIAMI -- It was a tale of two pitchers on Saturday afternoon at loanDepot park.

Both were making some sort of debut: For one, it was his first MLB game; for the other, it was his first game at his club’s home ballpark.

That’s where the stories diverge, though. Jared Jones excelled in his first Major League start for the Pirates, dominating the Marlins over 5 2/3 innings. Ryan Weathers was solid for Miami, but he got hit around and exited after four innings en route to a 9-3 defeat, the club’s third straight loss. The last time the Marlins lost three in a row to open a season was in 2015.

Miami, without much starting depth due to injuries, desperately needed Weathers to pitch deep into the penultimate matchup of the four-game set. Four of the Marlins’ big starters (Sandy Alcantara, Braxton Garrett, Eury Pérez and Edward Cabrera) started the season on the injured list. The bullpen was taxed after 14 combined innings over the first two contests of the year (including a 12-inning game on Opening Day).

So the Marlins let Weathers stay on the mound through some trouble, resulting in 94 pitches over four innings of work, including three runs on seven hits and two walks (plus five strikeouts).

“I was making a lot of quality pitches,” Weathers said. “Had several [at-bats] that were just long at-bats, then just leave one pitch over the heart of the plate and they turn into base hits. Thought I threw the ball fine, just the pitch count got ran up quick.”

Weathers, for lack of a better phrase, weathered the storm nonetheless. He worked out of jams, minimizing damage while navigating a hard-hitting Pirates lineup. But that doesn’t come without blowing up the pitch count. Just look at the third inning: five batters in a row reached base, and though Weathers worked out of a bases-loaded jam to hold the Bucs to one run, he only did so by throwing 30 pitches. He had thrown 32 combined over the first two innings.

“The pitches were -- I went back and watched, and they were all well located,” Weathers said. “They just had good ABs. They’re just having some swings, wood was getting on it and, yeah, sometimes it just happens.”

“Overall it was good,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “He just had long at-bats, 30-pitch innings, [and] I think that’s what kind of hurt him toward the end. … Overall his stuff actually looked good. He throws like that, I think we’ll be okay, but [94] pitches in four innings, that’s not ideal when our bullpen is just kind of crushed right now. So we got to get a little more length out of our starters eventually.”

Miami’s cold bats -- hitless through three innings with four batters combining for five hits on the day -- didn’t help Weathers’ case. After all, it’s hard to work the counts when you don’t have some run protection.

It’s been an unfortunate start to the season for Miami, coming off its first full-season playoff appearance in 20 years. But it’s also still early, and we’ve seen what happens when taking early-season results too seriously (remember when the Pirates finished last April with a 20-9 record?)

Pregame, Schumaker discussed what he wanted to see from Weathers. The main thing? First-pitch strikes. Weathers followed through, with a first-pitch strike against 16 of the 22 batters he faced.

So while Weathers might not have had the superb day he was surely hoping for, he certainly did his job. And though it wasn’t necessarily the result the Marlins -- or Weathers -- would have liked, it was a special day for Weathers nonetheless. His father, David, who spent nearly five years with the Marlins (1993-96, 2004), was in attendance to see his son make his first start in Miami.

“It felt really good,” Weathers said. “It was cool for the first time to be on the home side. I still had a lot of fun today. … I was really happy -- good spot, where it was -- but the competitor in me; today just wasn’t good enough.

“[My] job as a starter is to get deep into outings and keep the team -- give them a chance to win. I did one of the parts today, [but] getting deeper into games -- I did not do that today. Just got to improve on that in my next outing.”