Sandy Alcantara lowered his ERA to 1.61 after pitching a shutout through nine innings. Out of Alcantara’s last five starts, he’s completed at least eight innings in four of them. Alcantara also extended his streak to 18 scoreless innings.
But Sandy’s performance isn’t the core memory that young Marlins fans walked out of the stadium with on Wednesday night. They will probably remember seeing their Marlins in a 0-0 ballgame heading into the 10th inning against the Nationals. Even worse, in the top of the 10th inning, Miami let up an RBI single from Keibert Ruiz. Luckily, the Marlins scored two runs in the bottom of the 10th for the comeback walk-off. It was certainly an exciting game in Miami on Wednesday.
Recap
With a scoreless game up until extras between the Nats and Marlins, you would think that it was two pitchers who were both lights out, and the winner would be whoever cracks him first. Well, you would think wrong. The Marlins had six hits in the first five innings off Josiah Gray. Most of the hits for the Marlins came from singles with none on or just one man on.
The drama was not short-numbered as the game entered extra innings. The Nationals led off with Keibert Ruiz, who was 1-of-3 going into his at-bat. Alcantara’s night was over after nine shutout innings. Tanner Scott was now on the mound for Miami. Due to changes in the off-season, the MLB stuck with their experimental rule of having a runner on second to start extra innings. So, with a runner in scoring position, Ruiz took a weird swing that would’ve been a ball, and stuck it into shallow outfield and allowed Luis Garcia to score from second. The next two batters struck out and the last one grounded out. The heat was now turned on for the Marlins, who were down 1-0.
Willians Astudillo came up to the plate with Jazz Chisholm on second and one out. He swung at two strikes, then made contact into the right field corner, and Chisholm rounded third to tie the game, avoided the tag, but the drama now starts. After what appeared to be touching home plate and gaining a run, the umpire never called him safe or out, so the catcher tagged him while walking back to the dugout. This was, of course, met with much discrepancy, and official review was underway. Chisholm was then called safe and the Marlins now had a tie game.
Next up to the plate was Jesus Aguilar, who lined one off the second base bag and past the second basemen, which allowed Willians Astudillo to score; the Marlins began their celebration for their second walk-off win of the season.
The Marlins look to win one more game against Washington Thursday night at 6:40 PM.