Marlins surging entering rematch vs. Rockies

The Miami Marlins aren't going to the playoffs, but they haven't given up on the season.

The Marlins have won five of their last six games and can capture their second straight series win on Wednesday night when they face the Colorado Rockies in Denver.

Left-hander Ryan Weathers (2-1, 2.73 ERA) will start for the Marlins and will oppose rookie right-hander McCade Brown (0-4, 9.88).

Brown, who made his major league debut Aug. 24, has never faced Miami while Weathers is familiar with the Rockies, who have lost nine of their past 10 games.

In four starts -- and five appearances -- vs. Colorado in his career, Weathers owns an 0-1 record and a 8.44 ERA, and all but one of those games has been in Denver.

The Marlins (71-80) won the opener of the three-game series on Tuesday night, 6-5, their first win of the season against the Rockies (41-110). Colorado swept a three-game series in Florida in early June, but since then Miami is 48-43.

The Marlins got some key players back for the series in Denver, including Connor Norby, who has spent much of the second half of the season on the injured list. He missed nearly two months with a left wrist injury, returned for a week, and then landed on the IL for a quad injury before being activated Monday, and he is excited to finish strong in the final two weeks.

"I feel like I can contribute," Norby said Tuesday before starting at third base against the Rockies. "The goal is obviously to win as many games from now -- that's always the goal. Help teams win. Finish strong, take the offseason [to] hopefully put this year behind me. We all continue to grow as individuals and as a team. That's the goal."

Norby had a single in his return to the lineup and caught Hunter Goodman's line drive with the tying run on third to end the game.

The Rockies, playing their last homestand of the season, need only one victory in their final 11 games to pass the win total of the 2024 Chicago White Sox, who set the record for the most losses in a season (121) in the modern era.

Two more wins would enable Colorado to avoid tying the 1962 expansion New York Mets' 120 losses.

A win on Wednesday also would be the first for Brown, who has struggled in the first four starts of his career. His last outing, a 2-0 loss Thursday at San Diego, was the longest to date, but he was done after 4 1/3 innings and 81 pitches.

He is learning the ropes at this level and working on thrown strikes early in at-bats.

"My emphasis the rest of this year is really honing in on the command and to start getting ahead in counts, that sort of thing," Brown said recently. "The experience thing is huge. I'm just trying to take it day by day and stay where my feet are and not think too far ahead or get too stuck on how my last outings have been.

"I'm trying every day to get a little bit better and develop to where we can do something special here."