Sandy Alcantara bounces back from shaky Opening Day for 4-hit shutout in 2nd start of 2023
Sandy Alcantara #SandyAlcantara
The dreaded moment arrived in the eighth inning of the Miami Marlins’ badly needed 1-0 win against the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday: The Marlins were clinging to a one-run lead and Sandy Alcantara, in only his second start of the season, was working on a shutout, but approaching 100 pitches.
Skip Schumaker looked around Miami’s dugout for advice and Mel Stottlemyre Jr. gave him some: Go ask Jacob Stallings what he thinks.
“He knows him,” Stallings heard the pitching coach say and Schumaker turned to Stallings. A smile crept up the catcher’s face. “He’s good,” he said, laughing.
They were all right and it came together for one of the most memorable moments of the season so far. Alcantara came back out for the ninth, worked through a one-out single with a game-ending double play, and finished off the first complete game and shutout of the 2023 MLB season. It only took him 100 pitches to do it and the game was over in just 1:57 — the first game to clock in under two hours this year.
After an uncharacteristically unimpressive start on Opening Day, Alcantara was back at his best and the Marlins (2-4) got an important early-season win in Miami.
“It’s nice to be on the side of it. I’ve seen it on the other side too many times,” said Schumaker, who’s in his first year as manager. “He’s just a treat to watch.”
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Alcantara was efficient, effective and, most of all, basically unhittable. The All-Star starting pitcher gave up just four hits and one walk, struck out five and threw 68 of his 100 pitches for strikes.
It was a needed return to form for Alcantara, who walked four and gave up three runs, and didn’t even get through six innings, in a season-opening loss to the Mets—his only other start of the year so far—on Thursday.
He was so good, the Marlins were able to get only their second win of the year despite managing just three hits and striking out nine times in five innings against Twins starting pitcher Kenta Maeda. Outfielder Avisail Garcia’s second-inning solo home run — a 388-foot bomb — was enough to hold up for a win.
“I told him the night before he was going to throw nine innings,” Garcia said, “and he did.”
Alcantara was not happy with his first start of the season last week. Four walks, he said, made him feel “so bad.”
The standard is set high for the 27-year old Dominican. His Cy Young Award-winning campaign last year was historic, with a 2.38 ERA that was second in the National League and more complete games on his own — six — than any other team had across MLB. He made an old-school, workmanlike attitude work in the modern era and managed to finish the year ranked in the top five in the Majors in wins above replacement, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
He’s the type of pitcher whose starts should be events and, even though the crowd at loanDepot park was sparse at first-pitch, his bounce-back performance was a reminder of why.
Minnesota (4-1) never seriously threatened to score against Alcantara. The right-handed pitcher never had an inning with multiple base runners and only once let anyone get past first base. Only three of the batted balls he allowed traveled farther than 330 feet and only one of those was hit harder than 100 mph. He threw 30 sinkers and the average exit velocity against them was just 84.4 mph.
“We kind of abandoned the entire pregame meeting pretty early,” Stallings said, “just because his two-seam was so good.”
The only semblance of trouble he got into came in the top of the seventh, when he issued a lead-off walk to Twins outfielder Trevor Larnach and even then he set down the next three batters in order, without letting any of them hit a fair ball out of the infield — a groundout to third, a strikeout swinging after Larnach got to second and a foul out to right field to end the inning.
When Alcantara walked out to the mound for the final time at the start of the ninth inning, the crowd, which eventually grew to 10,668, rose to its feet to watch Alcantara face the top of the Twins’ lineup. He got one quick out, then gave up a single to Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa.
By then, A.J. Puk was warming up. The original plan, Schumaker said, was to let the relief pitcher face Larnach to get the lefty-lefty matchup, but Schumaker changed his mind.
Alcantara threw his 99th pitch at the bottom of the zone for a called strike. His 100th got Larnach to bounce a grounder to second base for an easy double play. Alcantara missed out on a Maddux — a shutout on fewer than 100 pitches, an unofficial stat named for Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux — by just one pitch.
“When his career turned was when he just really tried to get Strike 1,” Stallings said. “He is certainly capable of striking guys out. I think if he wanted to, he probably could strike more guys out, but he’s just so effective in the zone.”
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