After a scoreless first outing, Valente Bellozo exposes limitations in Marlins loss

It wasn’t the start that Valente Bellozo wanted. Nor the Marlins for that matter.

After a scoreless five-inning outing during his first major-league start, the Mexican-born pitcher gave up five earned runs in five innings on 98 pitches in the Marlins’ 8-3 loss to the Red Sox on Tuesday.

The first major blow came in the top of the first from Rafael Devers, who delivered a single into right field to bring home two runners.

Then, three innings later, shortstop Ceddanne Rafaela hit a 379-foot homer to left field to make it a 5-0 game. Both base hits came when Bellozo’s changeup hung in the strike zone for too long. “I was trying to throw it down,” Bellozo said about the home run pitch to Rafaela. “I missed middle-middle and that’s baseball. You tip the cap and keep going.”

That was the theme of Tuesday’s game. Despite a vast arsenal of off-speed pitches, Boston’s hitters were able to square up on Bellozo’s off-speed pitches in the strike zone and deliver damage. Without a high-speed fastball, it was hard for the 24-year-old rookie to get batters out easily.

“He’s not a huge stuff guy where he’s gonna punch out a bunch of players,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “But he has enough to keep them off-balance. The number one thing is making sure he’s changing eye levels because that’s gonna be the biggest thing for him not having this 95-96 mph fastball.”

Because he has a fastball that only lingers in the 90-91 mph range, Bellozo’s success in the major leagues will likely hinge on his pitch sequencing and deception.

However, it wasn’t all bad for the rookie pitcher. While Bellozo’s first game may look better on paper, he showed more promise in his second start at striking batters out. The rookie pitcher tallied eight strikeouts, five of which came via the cutter.

“Today [the cutter] was really good. It backdoored against lefties and also righties,” Bellozo said. “I think me and [catcher] Nick [Fortes] saw that they weren’t watching the cutter good and we kept attacking that.”

The Mexican-born pitcher utilized his fastball in 43 percent of his pitches during Tuesday’s game, with his cutter and changeup coming in at 22 percent and 17 percent, respectively. This was a change from his debut on Wednesday, when Bellozo relied on the sweeper as his secondary pitch of choice, employing it 31 percent of the time. The rookie pitcher’s comfort with a variety of off-speed pitches should help him keep batters off-balance in the future.

Moreover, despite giving up runs in the first and fourth innings, Bellozo kept the Red Sox scoreless during the second, third and fifth innings.

“It’s kind of an interesting outing because he had eight strikeouts, but when he was hit, he was hit hard,” Schumaker said. “There’s a lot to like, just the balls that were open in the middle got hit hard.”

Despite experiencing an up-and-down game, Bellozo’s mindset never seemed to waver amid the adversity.

“[The Red Sox] attacked me quickly. They swung quickly,” Bellozo said. “After the first inning, [I thought] it was a very good next few innings. I kept attacking and kept demonstrating to the guys that I can keep throwing strikes.”