Sandy Alcantara continued his post All-Star break turnaround by pitching seven stellar innings, and the visiting Miami Marlins earned a 5-1 victory over the New York Mets on Sunday afternoon.
Alcantara (8-11) allowed one run on four hits while completing seven innings for a season-high third straight outing. He had just two seven-inning starts all season before this streak.
The right-hander struck out six, walked one and is 4-2 with a 3.16 ERA in nine starts since the break after going 4-9 with a 7.22 ERA in his first 18 outings this season.
Rookie Jakob Marsee reached base four times and set up Miami’s first two runs off New York’s Kodai Senga (7-6). Marsee scored on a sacrifice fly by Otto Lopez in the first and on a two-run homer by rookie Agustin Ramirez in the third.
Heriberto Hernandez added an RBI single in the fourth, and Javier Sanoja scored from second in the fifth when Xavier Edwards hit an infield single and third baseman Brett Baty made an errant throw to second baseman Jeff McNeil, who was covering first.
The Marlins won three of four from the Mets, taking their first road series since July 28-30 at St. Louis.
New York fell to 7-6 in this stretch of 16 games in as many days, finished August with an 11-17 record and saw its lead over the Cincinnati Reds for the NL’s third and final wild-card spot trimmed to four games.
Senga allowed five runs on seven hits in 4 2/3 innings. The right-hander struck out six, walked two and did not complete five innings for the sixth time in nine starts since returning from a hamstring injury on July 11.
Alcantara took a shutout into the seventh until Cedric Mullins ended it with an RBI groundout. Mullins drove in the run after Alcantara opened the inning by allowing a single to Jeff McNeil and hitting Mark Vientos with a pitch.
Vientos was hit on the leg but did not try to move out of the way and Alcantara began saying something to him. As Vientos walked to first base, both benches and bullpens cleared for a few minutes, but no punches were thrown.
Calvin Faucher allowed a two-out double to Brandon Nimmo before retiring Pete Alonso to end the eighth. Freddy Tarnok stranded a runner in the ninth to finish off the five-hitter.
