Miami Marlins avoid sweep with walk-off win over New York Mets

Nick Fortes walked to the plate with two outs in the ninth inning Sunday looking for a sinker. He had a feeling Adam Ottavino was going to use that pitch against him.

Instead, the New York Mets’ reliever threw a slider to the Miami Marlins’ catcher down the heart of the plate for a called strike. Fortes admits he didn’t see the pitch well.

“It was pretty obvious,” Fortes said, “so I kind of figured he’d throw it again.”

Sure enough, Ottavino threw a second slider. Fortes was prepared this time. He hammered the pitch, an 80.9 mph offering, and sent it 419 feet to left field for a walk-off home run to lead the Marlins to a 3-2 win over the Mets at loanDepot park.

The 25-year-old catcher rounded the bases and was greeted by a Gatorade dumping and a celebration by his teammates at home plate.

“It’s pretty special,” Fortes said. “Running around the bases felt like I was on cloud nine. My parents were here to see it, so it was pretty awesome.”

It was Fortes’ first career walk-off as a big leaguer and it helped the Marlins (33-38) avoid a three-game sweep at the hands of the top team in the National League.

The Mets (47-27) won the first two games of the set Friday and Saturday by identical 5-3 scores.

“A huge moment,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “Any time you do that as a player, it’s just a great feeling. It couldn’t have come at a really better time for us.”

That’s true, considering where the Marlins are in the standings. At five games under .500, Miami is 12-and-a-half games behind the Mets in the NL East and six-and-a-half back of the NL’s third and final wild card spot.

They are 2-5 against the Mets compared to 16-9 against rest of NL East (4-5 against the Atlanta Braves, 4-3 against the Philadelphia Phillies and 8-1 against the Washington Nationals).

“We need to get better to face these teams at the top of the division,” said shortstop Miguel Rojas, who hit a game-tying home run in the third.

For a day, they showed what they could do when things are going right.

The late heroics backed up a strong outing from Daniel Castano, who held the Mets to two runs on five hits and two walks while striking out four over seven innings.

The 27-year-old lefty has now had quality outings in two of his past three starts since being called up from Triple A Jacksonville. Castano also threw 6 2/3 shutout innings against the Phillies on June 15.

“I’m confident that I can pitch here or else I wouldn’t be here,” Castano said. “It’s just staying humble, staying who I am, not getting too high on myself or not going into self pity after one bad outing.”

He dealt with traffic on the basepaths in each of the first three innings.

In the first, Castano worked around a leadoff double to Brandon Nimmo and walk to Starling Marte by retiring the next three hitters in order, with Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso both hitting flyouts and Mark Canha striking out.

In the second, he worked around a leadoff double to J.D. Davis by striking out Eduardo Escobar, getting Luis Guillorme to ground out and striking out James McCann.

Castano gave up a leadoff home run to Nimmo to start the third and then gave up two more doubles to Marte and Alonso to put Miami behind 2-1.

The 27-year-old lefty settled in after that, retiring 14 of the final 15 batters he faced, with a two-out walk to Lindor in the fifth being Castano’s lone blemish to cap his outing.

“Early on,” Mattingly said, “it was a little scary. Nimmo leads off with the double and then he walks Marte and it’s like, ‘Here we go.’ ... All of a sudden, he started throwing the ball over the middle of the plate. He’s got to continue to make pitches and that’s really what he did.”

Steven Okert and Tanner Scott threw scoreless eighth and ninth innings, respectively, to set up the walk-off.

Miami, which was without three regulars (Jazz Chisholm Jr., Jorge Soler and Avisail Garcia) in its starting lineup, opened scoring in the first when a Garrett Cooper sacrifice fly drove in Jon Berti, who led off the inning with a double and got to third base on a Rojas groundout.

Rojas then tied the game in the bottom of the third with a solo home run to left field, his sixth home run of the season.

Roster move

The Marlins designated for assignment infielder Willians Astudillo prior to Sunday’s series finale and selected the contract of infielder Erik Gonzalez to take Astudillo’s place on both the active and 40-man rosters.

Gonzalez started at third base on Sunday, but his stint with the Marlins might be short-lived. Brian Anderson was in the clubhouse postgame Sunday after playing three rehab assignment games with Triple A Jacksonville from Thursday through Saturday. When Anderson is activated, Gonzalez or Luke Williams would be the logical options to be replaced.

Up next

The Marlins now head on a seven-game road trip, playing three games with the St. Louis Cardinals Monday through Wednesday and then a four-game set with the Washington Nationals that starts Friday and ends on July 4.