The Marlins and Braves found themselves in an early slugfest on Wednesday night at Truist Park. But when it was over, Atlanta left Miami far behind, setting a National League record for runs scored in a game to hand the Marlins a 29-9 loss.

Miami is still only 3 1/2 games behind the NL East-leading Braves. The club will now play an important stretch of seven games in five days against the second-place Phillies starting Thursday night; Philadelphia has won seven of its past 10 games.

“[Wednesday’s game] gets washed out quickly,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “On the other side of the coin, we take two out of three [from the Braves]. We have to go home and play well. We have to get past this and do it fast.”

• Box score

No matter who the Marlins had on the mound, they had a tough time throwing strikes and getting outs. The roughest inning was in the bottom of the second, when the Braves struck for 11 runs against right-handers Pablo López and Jordan Yamamoto. Atlanta hit three home runs in the inning.

From Mattingly’s perspective, the turning point in the second inning occurred when Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte hit a sacrifice fly to Starling Marte that scored Austin Riley. The Marlins felt Riley shouldn’t have scored, because they believed Adam Duvall was tagged out at third base before Riley touched home plate. However, Duvall was ruled safe on the field, and the call stood after the Marlins challenged the call. Had Duvall been called out, that would have ended the inning with Miami leading by one.

“That cost us 10 runs right there, honestly,” Mattingly said. “That was frustrating, but after that the game got out of hand. We could have made pitches to get out of it.”

Despite his struggles, Yamamoto stayed in longer than he may have otherwise in order to keep the Marlins from using too many relievers. He allowed 13 runs (12 earned) in 2 2/3 innings and threw 94 pitches. Mattingly needed to save his ‘pen due to the upcoming set against the Phillies, not to mention the fact that the Marlins don’t have any days off the rest of the season.

“You have to use your long guy. You can’t take him out of the game, because you blow up your bullpen. The whole thing is a snowball after that,” Mattingly said. “… Yamamoto did the best that he could. Once he came out of the second inning, I told him I was going to run him out of pitches. ... [He tried] to get it dialed in, but he never really got it dialed in. It has been a battle for him this year.”

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Despite it all, the Marlins never gave up. After the Braves scored their 11 runs to make it a nine-run game, Miami fought back to narrow the gap against Braves left-hander Tommy Milone. After the top of the fourth, the Marlins were down by five runs before Atlanta pulled away for good.

Lewis Brinson highlighted the scoring with a three-run homer in the third inning, and the Marlins' No. 4 prospect per MLB Pipeline, Jazz Chisholm, notched a trio of Major League firsts -- his first RBI on his first triple in the second inning, then a solo homer in the fourth for his first big league blast.

“All night long, our offense kept coming. Those guys kept swinging the bats. We had good at-bats all night long,” Mattingly said. “For a game like that -- I know it gets long, tough and it gets sloppy on the field sometimes, because you are on your legs so much -- but at the plate, I felt like our guys played until the last out.”