Alcantara falters after promising start vs. Mets
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NEW YORK -- It appeared that Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara was going to have a quality start against the Mets on Saturday night at Citi Field. In the first five innings, Alcantara allowed one run on four hits. It helped that he was aggressive and attacking the hitters.
It went downhill after that as the Mets defeated Miami, 4-1. The Marlins have lost five consecutive games to drop to 10-29.
In the sixth inning with the score tied at 1, Alcantara allowed one-out back-to-back homers to Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto.
“I was trying to attack [Conforto], but he made the adjustment and hit my pitch,” Alcantara said. “[With Alonso], I was trying to throw a slider, but it was in the middle of the plate.”
After getting the second out, Alcantara allowed an RBI single to his pitching counterpart, Jacob deGrom.
"That was awesome," Alonso said of the back-to-back homers.
"Mike had a hell of an at-bat," he said. "That's two games in a row where he's been awesome at the plate. Having Jake out there on the mound, we had the utmost confidence that the score was going to stay the same. We just kind of needed to rally together, and also Jake helped himself out with a big hit later on in the inning."
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Despite the one bad inning, Marlins manager Don Mattingly was impressed with what he saw from Alcantara.
“It looked like his stuff was good,” Mattingly said. “He ran into trouble in that inning there. Even with the back-to-back homers, I thought Alcantara would get out of that. But it kind of came apart right there in that inning.”
The Marlins were hoping to get some offense when they added outfielder Harold Ramirez and Garrett Cooper to the 25-man roster. But they scored just the one run, which was provided by Alcantara, who doubled down the left-field line to score Jon Berti in the third inning.
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“I went in the box thinking, ‘I’m going to hit one pitch. If he throws me a fastball in the middle [of the plate]’ … I swung the bat and I hit a double,” Alcantara said.