MIAMI _ When the Braves needed the dude they consider their staff ace to step up and pitch like it Saturday night, Julio Teheran answered the bell.
He bounced back from a couple of uninspired performances to pitch six scoreless innings in a 3-1 win against the Marlins as the Braves clinched their first series win in two weeks and continued their success at Marlins Park.
Nick Markakis and Dansby Swanson hit run-scoring singles in the fourth inning to send the Braves toward their second consecutive win since a six-game losing streak. It moved them ahead of the skidding and now last-place Marlins in the National League East standings.
The Marlins were shut out until Justin Bour's leadoff homer in the seventh on the first pitch thrown by reliever Eric O'Flaherty, the 46th homer of Bour's career and remarkably the first against a left-hander.
Bour has hit 10 homers in 33 games against the Braves, his most against any team. All but two of those have been in Miami including one in each of the first two games of this series.
The Braves will go for a three-game sweep Sunday afternoon at Marlins Park, where they have a majors-best 34-15 since the retractable-dome stadium opened in 2012 including 9-3 since the beginning of the 2016 season.
Teheran (3-3) allowed just three hits and two walks with four strikeouts in six innings, and left for a pinch-hitter in the seventh despite the Braves having no runners on base and Teheran's pitch count at an unalarming 94 (62 strikes). When Bour homered on the first pitch thrown by O'Flaherty, that decision to pull Teheran was starting to look especially dicey.
But O'Flaherty settled in retired the next three batters. And after the Braves added a run in the eighth, reliever Arodys Vizcaino gave up a two-out single in the bottom of the inning before striking out Marcell Ozuna and pounding his glove excitedly as he walked off the mound following the big out.
Jim Johnson pitched a perfect ninth for his sixth save.
The Marlins, despite a potent lineup, have a season-high five-game losing streak and have dropped 14 of 17 games since a 10-8 start. Their pitching staff is thin and lately they've played poor defense, including a few costly mistakes Saturday.
Left fielder Ozuna lost Freddie Freeman's fly ball in the lights to start the fourth inning, giving Freeman a double. Markakis drove him in one out later, and after a groundout, a wild pitch and a walk, Swanson singled to push the lead to 2-0.
Bour's homer cut the lead in half, but the Braves pushed it back to a two-run margin in the eighth after another Freeman double, this time a clean hit with two out. Matt Kemp followed with a grounder that third baseman Derek Dietrich fielded before bouncing a throw to first base. It was ruled a hit with a throwing error allowing Freeman to score.
Three of Teheran's past four starts had been bad to very bad, and he'd gone 1-3 with an 8.02 ERA and .850 opponents' OPS in that stretch. He was coming off consecutive losses against the Mets and Cardinals in which he'd given up 15 hits, 10 runs and three home runs in 11 innings, the Braves losing those games by scores of 7-5 and 5-3 during the team's run of eight losses in nine games.
He got back on track against the Marlins with his first scoreless outing since going six innings Opening Day against the Mets, and his first game without allowing an earned run since he pitched seven innings against the Pirates in his second start and was charged with two runs, both unearned.
Teheran did it against a team that had frustrated him since September 2015. In his past four starts against the Marlins before Saturday, he was 0-3 with a 5.79 ERA and five homers allowed, and the Braves had lost all four games.
He came out firing strikes Saturday and didn't face more than four batters in any inning. All three hits he allowed were doubles with one out in the first, one out in the fourth and two out in the fifth. Teheran retired five of the six batters he faced in those innings after the hits, with a two-out walk in the fourth the only exception.
