As Ronny Simon walked to be with his teammates at the mound, he grabbed his jersey to wipe away the tears from his eyes.
Disaster unfolded Tuesday in just his 19th career game, with the 25-year-old utility player committing three errors and being spared a fourth in the first four innings of an 8-6 loss to the Padres.
Simon’s mistakes played a large role in why San Diego (31-22) rallied from a six-run, first-inning deficit, and the magnitude of it all seemingly resulted in him being pulled after just four innings.
“It happens, it’s baseball,” Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. said after the game. “Everyone that has won a Platinum or Gold Glove has had one of those nights. I definitely know he’s a great player, he has won MVP from Winter League over there in the Dominican and I’ve seen him play really good baseball. I have no doubt he’s going to be a really good baseball player.”
Young teams like the Marlins are going to go through growing pains, and Simon had one of those nights that almost every big leaguer will have to endure and then forget.
The ball, it seemed, just kept finding Simon, and the errors kept piling up.
His first blunder came in the second inning after he could not field an RBI single to his left from Tyler Wade, with the ball careening off his glove.
Simon then fired wildly to the plate, which allowed another run to score and cut the lead to 6-3.
The home scorer saved Simon from an error in the next inning when a chopper that the infielder should have fielded instead went by him, allowing a run to score and moved a runner to third with one out.
The play initially had been ruled an error before being switched to a hit, per the Associated Press.
Not making the play also helped the Padres tack on another run to make it a 6-5 game.
Simon then endured his worst frame in the fourth when he made an error on back-to-back plays to start the frame, the first a fielding error and then a throwing error.
Misplaying those two balls allowed the Padres to tie the game one batter later when Luis Arraez singled.
Simon later exited the field with the team in the fourth inning before being replaced for the bottom of the fifth. He finished 1-for-2 with an RBI.
The Marlins (21-32) aim to avoid the three-game sweep in Wednesday’s series finale.