Marlins back up another strong Pablo Lopez home start to clinch series vs Giants
Don Mattingly, with the Miami Marlins and San Francisco Giants locked in a tie game in the bottom of the seventh on Wednesday, turned to a pair of veterans with the hope to spark the offense late and extend their hot streak.
The plan worked.
After Jorge Alfaro’s leadoff single knocked starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner out of the game, Curtis Granderson roped a pinch-hit single to right field and Neil Walker followed with a pinch-hit double down the right-field line off reliever Mark Melancon to bring Alfaro home and give the Marlins a lead they would not relinquish in a 4-2 series-clinching win at Marlins Park.
“Curt put a great at-bat together,” Walker said, “and I kind of saw of [Melancon] was working [Granderson] there. He threw a bunch of curveballs. I had a pretty good idea of what he was trying to do. Just coming off the bench like that, you just want to put together a good at-bat and hopefully hit a ball hard. I was lucky enough to push that one down the right-field line.”
The Marlins (19-34) have now won nine of their last 12 games, while the Giants (21-33) have dropped eight of their last nine.
Garrett Cooper hit a sacrifice fly to score Granderson for the insurance run in the seventh. A Harold Ramirez RBI single in the eighth scored Starlin Castro, who led off the inning the the Marlins’ first triple of the 2019 season.
The late offense salvaged yet another quality home start by pitcher Pablo Lopez, who gave up just one run — a solo home run by Brandon Belt in the fourth — over 6 innings of work. Lopez, who earned a no-decision, scattered four hits and a walk while striking out five. He retired final nine batters after giving up the game-tying home run to lead off the fourth.
“It’s always a positive to close in a good way,” Lopez said. “You learn from it. I feel like the change-up wasn’t there at the beginning. I tried to throw one for a strike and Belt hit it out of the park. After that, it’s a matter of remembering what happened with that pitch ... It was better after that.”
Through five home starts this year, Lopez has a 1.84 ERA and 31 strikeouts over 29 1/3 innings. However, he has struggled in six road starts, posting an 8.26 ERA over 28 1/3 innings. He only has one start away from Marlins Park in which he threw at least five innings and gave up fewer than four runs.
Nick Anderson, Tayron Guerrero and Sergio Romo threw an inning each out of the bullpen to seal the win. Romo earned his 11th save of the year after holding the Giants — the team that drafted him back in 2005 and with whom he spent the first nine years of his MLB career and won three World Series — to one run.
The Marlins opened scoring in third when Starlin Castro hit a sacrifice fly to score Austin Dean, who led off with a single and advanced to third two at-bats later on a Brian Anderson single. The Marlins finished with 11 hits, their seventh time with double-digit hits over the last 12 games.
“It really has been a team thing,” Mattingly said.
Miami can earn its third sweep over the past four series with a win on Thursday. First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m.
Career night
Alfaro had his first career four-hit game on Wednesday, continuing his stellar run over the past couple weeks. The catcher is hitting .378 (14 for 37) with three home runs over the Marlins’ past 12 games.
This and that
Both Marlins CEO Derek Jeter and director of player development Gary Denbo on Wednesday responded to an article in the Athletic earlier this month that claimed Denbo “engaged in verbal abuse, fat shaming and blatant favoritism toward certain Marlins personnel” while also citing him as the reason for the Marlins parting ways with their former Class A affiliate in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“I thought it was a little bit unfair,” Jeter said. “What happened is you’re giving a platform to some disgruntled employees who are no longer here. Look, the task that we have, the job that we have is a tough one. We’re turning around an organization that hasn’t had a lot of success. We’ve made some very difficult decisions that had to be made. The thing I know about Gary is he cares a great deal about this organization. He cares a great deal about the players, not only on the field but off the field. I’ve known him since I was 18 years old. I thought there were some unfair shots taken, but I’m not going to get into that.”
Denbo’s comments: “We’re focused on the draft right now. I will say that I offered comments to the author of that article and he decided not to use them. Instead, he decided to go with comments that were made by people that decided not to give names. We’re very focused on what we’re doing right now and looking forward and those are the types of things that happen as you’re building an organization and trying to get back to a championship level.”
This story was originally published May 29, 2019 at 9:48 PM.
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