MIAMI _ Power to the stadium lights went out briefly Wednesday night at Marlins Park, but the power in Giancarlo Stanton's bat did not. Fortunately for the Braves, the behemoth Miami slugger's two-homer night was matched by an unlikely source, Ender Inciarte.
After Inciarte's second homer of the night tied the score in the eighth inning, Tyler Flowers' two-out RBI single in the ninth inning scored Brandon Phillips from second base to lift the Braves to a 5-4 win that snapped a five-game losing skid.
The Braves went 2-6 on a season-opening trip, winning once against the Mets before getting swept in three games at Pittsburgh and splitting a two-game series at Marlins Park. Now they'll have a day off before their highly anticipated home opener at new SunTrust Park on Friday night.
Inciarte, who entered batting .152 with one extra-base hit and one RBI, came through with the second two-homer game of his career for a Braves team that needed it desperately.
The center fielder gave them a lead with a two-run homer in the third inning and brought the Braves back with a tying solo home run in the eighth, the second two-homer game of his career to go with one he hit against the Padres in September 2105.
Stanton hit a pair of two-run homers off Jaime Garcia to erase a pair of Braves leads, but Inciarte's eighth-inning home run got Garcia off the hook for what would have been the veteran left-hander's seventh consecutive loss and second in as many starts for the Braves. He got no decision after allowing seven hits and four runs (three earned) in five innings, with two walks and four strikeouts.
The unearned run charged to Garcia resulted from a fielding error by shortstop Dansby Swanson, who booted Christian Yelich's grounder with one out in the fifth inning immediately before Stanton's second homer.
Garcia got no decision and is 0-6 with 7.60 ERA in his past eight starts going back to Aug. 23 with the Cardinals, the longest losing streak of his career. He's 0-2 with a 7.98 ERA in three starts against the Marlins since the beginning of the 2016 season.
The Braves have handled Stanton far better than most teams throughout his career, holding him to a .203 average with 13 home runs, 54 walks and 108 strikeouts 316 at-bats before Wednesday. But against the former Cardinal Garcia, Stanton improved to 7-for-10 with three homers, four walks and six RBIs.
Play was halted for 27 minutes with two outs in the Braves' fourth inning after the stadium lights flickered and perhaps one-third of the lights went out, apparently the result of a direct lightning strike on a nearby power transformer.
Inciarte broke a scoreless tie with his two-run homer in the third inning, just his sixth hit in his 35th at-bat. But Stanton answered with two-run, two-out homer in the bottom of the inning, a towering shot that barely cleared the fence after it looked as if it might hit a roof support on its upward trajectory.
The Braves wasted no time taking another lead when Freeman led off the fourth inning with a home run off Marlins starter Tim Koehler. It was the third homer and fifth extra-base hit for Freeman, who'll probably have to carry more of the offensive load for a while after cleanup hitter Matt Kemp went on the 10-day disabled list Tuesday with a strained hamstring.
Stanton put the Marlins back in front, 4-3, with his mammoth two-run shot in the fifth, and the Braves looked like they would go quietly until Inciarte lined a homer over the right-field fence in the eighth off reliever Junichi Tazawa.
