PHOENIX — The Miami Marlins got a vintage Sandy Alcantara start on Wednesday and the offense put together its best inning of the season when the team needed it the most.
It paved the way for the Marlins ending a road trip to forget on a high note.
Alcantara threw seven innings and the Marlins scored eight runs in the ninth as Miami beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 11-3 at Chase Field to avoid a three-game series sweep and get just their second win of this week-long West Coast trip after going 1-3 against the San Diego Padres.
The Diamondbacks tied the game in the eighth on Jordan Luplow’s pinch-hit, two-run home run against Steven Okert, but the Marlins (14-17) rallied in the ninth with eight consecutive two-out hits
It started with Jacob Stallings, who lined a two-out single to center field to score Jesus Sanchez, who reached base on a fielder’s choice and advanced to second on a Bryan De La Cruz single.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with a three-run home run to left-center field to give the Marlins a four-run cushion. It was Chisholm’s first hit of the series.
After that, it was three more singles by Garrett Cooper, Jorge Soler and Erik Gonzalez before Avisail Garcia hit a three-run home run to center field.
Jesus Aguilar had a pinch-hit single before the inning ended with a Sanchez groundout.
The late offense — and the three runs Miami scored earlier in the game — provided enough support to back up one of Alcantara’s best outings of the season.
Wednesday marked just the second time through seven starts this season that Alcantara pitched at least seven innings. The other came on April 20, when he threw eight shutout innings against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Alcantara allowed just five batters to safely reach base, allowing two hits and walking three. He struck out six — all swinging, all on changeups.
The only run he allowed came on an Alek Thomas solo home run in the third, when he sent a middle-middle fastball a projected 414 feet to left-center field.
The Marlins already had a three-run lead at that point. Joey Wendle opened scoring with a two-out, two-run home run in the first inning, and Stallings added an RBI single in the second that scored Sanchez.
But while the finale could serve a potential jumping off point as Miami prepares for a nine-game homestand against the Milwaukee Brewers (Friday through Sunday), Washington Nationals (Monday through Wednesday) and Atlanta Braves (May 20-22), it doesn’t entirely mitigate what happened on the road trip as a whole.
Miami dropped three of its four games against the Padres, all three by one run, and dropped the first two games against the Diamondbacks 4-3 on Monday and 9-3 on Tuesday.
— Wendle left Wednesday’s game in the third inning with right hamstring tightness. Erik Gonzalez replaced Wendle at third base.
