SAN DIEGO — It all finally clicked on the final day of the road trip.
Sandy Alcantara dominated on the mound, Lewis Brinson continued his hot streak with a pair of home runs and rookie Bryan De La Cruz belted his first MLB home run as well as the Miami Marlins beat the San Diego Padres 7-0 on Wednesday at Petco Park.
The Marlins (48-67) dropped their first five games of the road trip — swept in three games against the Colorado Rockies by a combined 34-14 score over the weekend before falling 8-3 on Monday and 6-5 on Tuesday to the Padres — before salvaging a game on their final West Coast trip of the regular season.
How did they do it?
— Brinson’s continued hot streak: Brinson needed two swings to score three runs on Wednesday.
In the first inning, he sent a slightly elevated Ryan Weathers fastball a projected 377 feet to left field for a two-run home run. The ball bounced off the top of the outfield wall and into the second deck of seats.
And then in the third, Brinson drove a slider on a 1-0 count a projected 433 feet to center field for his second home run of the game.
Wednesday was Brinson’s third career multi-home run game, with the other two outings coming during his rookies season in 2018.
Wednesday was also the latest highlight reel game for Brinson since rejoining the active roster on July 19. Over this 20-game stretch (including 16 starts), Brinson is hitting .349 (22 for 63) with seven doubles, five home runs, 18 RBI and 12 runs scored. Brinson batted .524 (11 for 21) throughout the road trip with three doubles, three home runs, eight RBI and six runs scored. He had multiple hits in four of six games.
— But it wasn’t just Brinson who had a solid day offensively: Isan Diaz had two hits and drove in the Marlins’ first run of the game with a double to right field in the first inning to score Miguel Rojas.
Brian Anderson also had multiple hits, including a two-out single up the middle in the fifth to score Jorge Alfaro.
And De La Cruz, a rookie outfielder acquired from the Houston Astros in the Yimi Garcia trade, hit his first career home run in the second inning.
— A quality outing from a starting pitcher: After the Marlins’ starting pitchers struggled all road trip, Alcantara put together a sterling performance to close out the Padres series.
The Marlins’ ace threw seven shutout innings, giving up just four hits and a pair of walks while striking out seven. Padres pitchers swung and miss 15 times on 49 swings — a 31-percent whiff rate that is well above Alcantara’s 25.4 percent season average.
Prior to Wednesday, Marlins starting pitchers tallied just a combined 16 2/3 innings and gave up 33 earned runs in that span — a 17.82 ERA. Even if David Hess’ one inning and seven earned runs as the opener for Sunday’s bullpen game against the Rockies is removed, the tally was still 26 earned runs over 15 2/3 innings — a 14.94 ERA.
No Marlins starting pitcher made it through five innings in any of the first five games. This included Alcantara giving up a career-worst 10 runs over 3 2/3 innings against the Rockies to begin the road trip.
JESUS SANCHEZ STARTS REHAB ASSIGNMENT
Jesus Sanchez is making his return to the field.
Sanchez, the fifth-ranked prospect in the Marlins’ system according to MLB Pipeline, began a rehab assignment with Triple A Jacksonville on Wednesday.
He has been on the COVID-19 related injured list since July 16 and began return-to-play protocols on July 27.
