WASHINGTON — For a brief moment, there was reason to be concerned. The final out of the fourth inning Monday, a hard-hit ground ball from the Washington Nationals’ Juan Soto, ricocheted off Sandy Alcantara’s left foot, bouncing straight to Lewin Diaz at first base. It capped yet another perfect inning from the Miami Marlins’ ace.
Alcantara, however, walked gingerly back to the visitor’s dugout at Nationals Park. His status to return appeared to be in question.
But about 10 minutes later, he was back on the mound. He threw warm-up pitches with manager Don Mattingly, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. and head athletic trainer Gene Basham before receiving words of encouragement from shortstop and team captain Miguel Rojas.
And then, Alcantara fired a 97.3 mph sinker to Josh Bell and went on with his latest dominant start.
Alcantara’s feat on Monday, in Miami’s 3-0 win to begin a three-game series: Eight innings of one-hit, shutout baseball on 96 pitches.
It’s just the latest Alcantara start that is showcasing his transformation into a bonafide ace. He threw at least seven innings while allowing two runs or fewer in five of his six starts in August.
In his last start on Wednesday, Alcantara threw nine innings of one-run ball in a game the Marlins won in extra innings.
His dominance continued on Monday.
Alcantara struck out seven, allowed just seven balls to leave the infield and had feel for all four of his pitches.
He needed just 30 pitches to get through the first three innings and was at 46 pitches when Soto’s ground ball — with an exit velocity of 111.5 mph — plunked Alcantara at the end of the fourth.
He carried a perfect game into the sixth, which was foiled when Keibert Ruiz led off the inning by reaching on a Jazz Chisholm Jr. fielding error at second base.
The no-hitter bid? That was spoiled with two outs in the seventh, when Josh Bell lifted Alcantara’s 82nd pitch of the night, a slider low in the strike zone, to the wall in right field for a single.
But Alcantara was economical down the stretch. He needed just six pitches to get three outs in the eighth before the Marlins used a pinch-hitter for his spot in the order in the top of the ninth.
As for the offense, the Marlins (61-83) opened scoring in the first inning on a Jesus Sanchez RBI single that scored Chisholm from second base. They tacked on a pair of insurance runs in the ninth when Alex Jackson’s double to left field scored Lewis Brinson and Lewin Diaz.
Dylan Floro worked around a leadoff single in the ninth by getting a double play and groundout to cap the shutout and record his 11th save of the season.
