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Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara in 2021. | Photo courtesy of Ryan Casey Aguinaldo/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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The Los Angeles Dodgers will try to continue their dominance over all-star Sandy Alcantara Saturday in Miami when they face the Marlins in the second game of a four-game series.
Alcantara is 0-3 lifetime against the Dodgers with a 14.79 ERA in 14 innings in four starts. He is 31-37 with a 2.89 ERA against the rest of baseball.
Alcantara (11-6) allowed six runs and 10 hits, both season highs, in 3 2/3 innings, his shortest start of the season, in a 10-3 loss Sunday at Dodger Stadium. The performance raised his ERA from 1.92, the best in Major League Baseball, to 2.19, third in MLB behind Houston right-hander Justin Verlander (1.87) and Dodger right-hander Tony Gonsolin (2.10).
Alcantara leads MLB with 176 2/3 innings pitched and in complete games with three. Houston left-hander Framber Valdez and Philadelphia right-hander Aaron Nola are the only other pitchers with multiple complete games with two each.
He was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and signed by the St. Louis Cardinals as an international free agent in 2013 when he was 17 years old. He made his major league debut in 2017 and was traded during the following off-season to Miami as part of a five-player trade that sent outfielder Marcell Ozuna to St. Louis.
Dodger right-hander Dustin May (1-0) will make his second start of the season after not pitching since May 2, 2021, when he suffered a season-ending elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. May allowed one hit over five innings and struck out nine, one off his career high in his 32 appearances, in a 7-0 victory over the Marlins last Saturday at Dodger Stadium.
Miami is 14-11 in Alcantara’s 25 starts.
The Dodgers (87-37) have a 7 1/2-game lead over the New York Mets and Houston Astros (both 81-46) in the race for home-field advantage throughout the postseason. They have won 42 of their 51 games since June 29, including 19 of 23 in August.
The Dodgers have scored a major league-high 674 runs and allowed a major league-low 395.
The Marlins (54-71) are 27th among the 30 MLB teams in runs with 460.
The game is set to begin at 3:10 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time and will be televised by SportsNet LA.
The Dodgers defeated Miami, 10-6, in 10 innings Friday, with Mookie Betts driving in four runs, with two home runs and the tie-breaking double in the 10th. Every player in the Dodger lineup had at least one hit, as they out-hit the Marlins 16-8 after being held to four hits through the first six innings.
