Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara gets his redemption against Dodgers with complete-game win

Sandy Alcantara had the bases loaded behind him, one out away from beating the best team in Major League Baseball or one miscue away from a sinking defeat.

The loanDepot park crowd, an announced crowd of 23,543 that was the third-largest of the season, chanted as their ace remained stoic with the game on the line and Joey Gallo in the batter’s box.

“Just get out of there,” Alcantara said. “Win the game. Finish the game.”

Three pitches later, on the 111th pitcher overall that fired out of Alcantara’s right arm on Saturday, Gallo hit a 92.7 mph changeup down the first-base line. Lewin Diaz scooped the ball just near the outer edge of the infield dirt, spun around and flipped the ball back to Alcantara, who toe-tapped first base for the out.

Sandy Alcantara got his redemption.

And it led to Miami Marlins finally getting a win against MLB’s top team to this point in the season, a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers after losing the first four games against the Dodgers to this point in the season. The Marlins are 55-71. The Dodgers fall to 87-38.

It was a much-needed bounce back after what happened on Sunday at Dodger Stadium. The Marlins’ ace and a legitimate contender for the National League’s Cy Young Award was chased with two outs in the fourth inning (his shortest outing of the season) after giving up six earned runs on 10 hits (both season highs).

On Saturday, Alcantara flipped the script.

Nine innings pitched. One earned run allowed on six hits and two walks. Ten strikeouts. His fourth complete game of the season — this one coming against the best lineup in baseball.

“You always want to have another opportunity,” Alcantara said. “They beat me there [in Los Angeles]. They came here and I just wanted to compete and win the game.”

Alcantara’s lone blemish on Saturday: A solo home run in the third inning to Mookie Betts, who sent a middle-middle slider a projected 411 feet to left-center field that put Miami in an early 1-0 hole.

After that? Alcantara allowed just two singles to Trea Turner (one of which was erased by a double play) before running into trouble in the ninth. He loaded the bases on back-to-back one-out singles to Freddie Freeman and Will Smith and a two-out walk to Justin Turner before Gallo’s game-ending groundout.

Simply put, it was one of Alcantara’s best performances of the season, a 111-pitch masterpiece.

It was Alcantara’s MLB-leading fourth complete-game of the season, following up performances against the Atlanta Braves on May 22, the St. Louis Cardinals on June 29 and the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 3.

“He was fantastic,” said catcher Jacob Stallings, who has caught all 26 of Alcantara’s starts this season. “That and St. Louis were the two most fun games I’ve ever had behind the plate. He was just locked in from the start.”

Alcantara is one of just two pitchers to throw a complete game against the Dodgers this season (also the Rockies’ Chad Kuhl on June 27). The outing lowers his ERA on the season to 2.13, the third-best mark in the majors behind only the Houston Astros’ Justin Verlander (1.87) and Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin (2.10). Alcantara still leads MLB with 185 2/3 innings pitched, far more than both of the pitchers ahead of him in the ERA standings (149 innings for Verlander, 128 1/3 for Gonsolin).

Alcantara has now tossed at least eight innings while allowing two earned runs or fewer 11 times this season.

“He expects greatness for himself,” third baseman/outfielder Brian Anderson said, “and we expect it now that he’s doing it almost each and every outing. We look for him to do that kind of stuff every single time he goes out there. Not trying to put any more pressure on him or anything like that, but his greatness shows through each game he pitches.”

So what changed between Alcantara’s start against the Dodgers on Sunday and his performance on Saturday?

Start with the pitch selection.

Seven of the 10 hits Alcantara gave up in the start at Dodger Stadium came on either his four-seam fastball or his sinker.

On Saturday, he threw those two pitches just 38 times while leaning more on his slider (38 pitches) and changeup (35 pitches). The Dodgers got just one hit on the changeup (Freeman’s ninth-inning single that bounced off Diaz’s glove) and two hits off the slider (Betts’ home run that leaked over the middle of the plate and a Turner single in the sixth). Eight of his 10 strikeouts came on those two pitches.

“We used different fastball usage,” Stallings said. “I know there were a lot of sliders today and a lot of changeups, but we used the fastball differently. Less sinkers to righties. More sinkers to lefties. That wasn’t exactly the game plan going in. It’s just kind of how it unfolded, but he had every pitch working.”

And the offense did just enough to back up Alcantara’s outing.

The Marlins tied the game in the fourth on an Anderson RBI single that scored Jon Berti, who singled and stole second (his MLB-leading 31st stolen base of the season). Anderson slid into second base on but was tagged out after briefly coming off the bag. He was ejected after arguing the call with second base umpire D.J. Reyburn. Jerar Encarnacion replaced Anderson in the lineup and in right field.

The go-ahead run? That came from Encarnacion, whose two-out single through the left side in the sixth inning scored Joey Wendle.

That was all Alcantara needed to back up his gem against baseball’s best offense.

“Very impressive,” Encarnacion said. “One of the greatest things I’ve seen in my life.”