NEW YORK — Sandy Alcantara was masterful again, the Miami Marlins’ ace working seven shutout innings against the New York Mets on Sunday at Citi Field.
And three innings after Alcantara walked off the mound for the final time, his teammates finally put a run on the board to salvage his efforts as the Marlins beat the Mets 2-0 in 10 innings to split the four-game series.
Miami (41-43) scored the winning run when Billy Hamilton, who pinch-ran for Garrett Cooper as Miami’s automatic runner at second base to start the 10th, stole third and scampered home on a wild throw from Mets catcher Tomas Nido. A Luke Williams two-out RBI single later in the inning scored Jesus Sanchez to give Miami an insurance run.
Tanner Scott worked a scoreless 10th to seal the win, record his 12th save of the season and get redemption after his throwing error in the 10th inning on Saturday allowed the
Alcantara held the Mets (53-33) off the board despite giving up six hits and a walk over seven innings. It was Alcantara’s 12th consecutive outing in which he has thrown at least seven innings and the fifth time in that span Alcantara held his opponent to zero earned runs.
Anthony Bass worked around a two-out single for a scoreless eighth and Richard Bleier pitched a scoreless ninth to get the game to extras.
The Marlins, however, had opportunities to score prior to extra innings that came up short. On two occasions, they had two runners on base with no outs only to come up empty.
Wendle was hit by a pitch and Jon Berti hit a single in the fourth before Garrett Cooper grounded into his second double play of the game and Jesus Aguilar grounded out to shortstop. And in the seventh, Berti led off with a single and Cooper walked before Aguilar hit a flyout to left field, Jesus Sanchez popped out and Brian Anderson struck out swinging.
Rojas exits
Shortstop Miguel Rojas left Sunday’s game in the sixth inning with neck tightness, two innings after colliding with Berti on a Francisco Lindor pop up in the fourth inning.
Rojas went down momentarily after making the play in shallow left field despite getting bumped by Berti running in from left field. He stayed in the game for the final out in the frame, played through the fifth inning and took his at-bat in the sixth inning before being replaced.
Wendle moved from second base to shortstop in Rojas’ absence, Berti moved from left field to second base and Luke Williams entered the game to play left field and took Rojas’ spot in the batting order.
