A second inning to forget and a rally that falls short doom Marlins in loss to Dodgers
The Miami Marlins opened their three-game road series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday by scoring five runs off Clayton Kershaw during the ace’s six innings on the mound.
That’s normally good news.
The problem: Miami scored all those runs while trying to play catch up after the Dodgers’ offense picked Sandy Alcantara apart in the second inning, tagging the Marlins’ ace for eight runs while he managed just one out.
The Marlins’ rally — valiant as it was — was not enough. They lost 9-6 to the defending World Series champions at Dodger Stadium. The Marlins are now 17-21. The Dodgers are 21-17.
“I don’t know what happened,” Alcantara said of his second inning. “I came out with my same mentality. Everything came too quick. I don’t know what I was doing. I think they got my pitches. I’ve got to keep working hard, keep watching the video and see what I have to do to get better.”
The eight earned runs allowed are the most Alcantara given up in a game in his career. The 1 1/3 innings was his shortest MLB outing as a starting pitcher.
And it’s not like he struggled out of the gate. Alcantara stranded Mookie Betts at third base in the first by recording consecutive strikeouts with elevated pitches to Justin Turner and Max Muncy.
But it all unraveled when he came back to the mound for the second.
The breakdown, batter-by-batter:
▪ Chris Taylor led off with a walk after a seven-pitch at-bat.
▪ Gavin Lux lifted a low 96.1 mph sinker and sent it off the wall in left-center field for a double. Taylor moves to third base.
▪ AJ Pollock hits a groundball single through the left side and into left field. Taylor scores. Lux moves to third. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. comes to the mound to talk with Alcantara. 1-0 Dodgers.
▪ Austin Barnes sends an elevated sinker to left field. The ball bounces off Adam Duvall’s glove at the wall for a double. Pollock reaches third but Matt Beaty replaces him. 2-0 Dodgers.
▪ Clayton Kershaw hits a groundball single up the middle. Beaty scores. Barnes gets to third. 3-0 Dodgers.
▪ Betts hits a changeup below the strike zone past Brian Anderson and into left field for a double. Barnes scores. Kershaw gets to third base. 4-0 Dodgers.
▪ Corey Seager lines an inside 97.8 mph fastball that bounces off Isan Diaz’s glove and into right field. Kershaw scores. Betts gets to third. 5-0 Dodgers.
▪ Turner strikes out on three pitches, fouling off a sinker and slider before whiffing on a low 90.7 mph changeup.
▪ Muncy ends Alcantara’s time on the mound by sending an elevated 96.3 mph four-seam fastball a projected 424 feet beyond the center-field wall. 8-0 Dodgers.
Nine batters, 38 pitches, seven hits, eight runs. Five of the seven hits he allowed had an exit velocity of at least 95 mph — the minimum to be defined as a hard hit by Statcast. Alcantara’s ERA jumped from 2.72 to 4.06.
“Just one of those innings that just kept getting away,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “You don’t see that very often. It’s like I told him on the bench. One inning of the whole year that kind of went bad. ... Seemed like they kind of had a good feel for what was coming. He got ahead in some counts and didn’t put them away. I haven’t looked at the tape of the game to see if he was making mistakes at that point. On an inning like that with Sandy’s stuff, you look at everything. Look to see if he’s doing anything, tipping pitches at all. It’s one of the things you think about with an inning like that. Plus, [the Dodgers are] really good but they’re also really good about picking those things up. You look at everything when he has a start like that and an inning like that. It doesn’t happen very often.”
Alcantara threw 11 sliders and 11 four-seam fastballs in the inning that resulted in four of the hits allowed plus the leadoff walk. He threw just nine changeups, which he has considered to be his best pitch as of late.
The offense did what it could to get the Marlins back into the game. Miami scored four in the third inning on a Garrett Cooper RBI single and an Adam Duvall three-run home run. Cooper hit an RBI double in the fifth as well to cut the deficit to three.
The bullpen ate up innings with minimal damage as well. Zach Pop threw 1 2/3 scoreless innings. John Curtiss threw another two scoreless frames. Adam Cimber had a scoreless sixth but Ross Detwiler allowed a runner he inherited from Cimber in the seventh to score when he grabbed a line drive from Lux with the bases loaded but botched a throw to second base that allowed Turner to score. Anthony Bender pitched a scoreless eighth.
The Marlins had the go-ahead run at the plate in the eighth after Brian Anderson and Isan Diaz hit back-to-back singles, Chad Wallach walked and Sandy Leon was hit by a pitch. Jon Berti struck out swinging to strand the three.
“It could have been one of those that totally got away,” Mattingly said. “Guys battled all day. ... One more big hit, and we’re in that game.”
In the end, the deficit was just too much to overcome.
This story was originally published May 15, 2021 at 1:28 AM.
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