Sandy Alcantara tries to give Marlins first win in N.Y. series

Can Sandy Alcantara find a way to help the Marlins even the series with the New York Mets?

Sandy Alcantara, the Miami Marlins No. 4 starter in the rotation, is trying to do something tonight he has never done before – win in the Big Apple.

After a lackluster 11-2 loss to the New York Mets on Friday night, the 23-year-old takes the mound to try and win his second game of the season. For those you who are counting at home, the Marlins have now lost four straight games on the road. They hope to even the series with their National League East rivals tonight at Citi Field.

For the season, Alcantara is 1-3 with a 4.93 ERA. He has 27 strikeouts on the season, but as manager Don Mattingly has stated more than once, his young flame-thrower has looked tentative on the mound at times.

That’s a problem Alcantara must correct.

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Alcantara takes the mound after Pablo Lopez was roughed up last night by the Mets bats. It wasn’t pretty as he surrendered 10 runs and lasted only three innings, his worst performance of the season by far.

“It looked like he didn’t have life on his fastball. He wasn’t locating very well,” Mattingly said. “Things got snowballed. You could tell guys [knew] what [pitch] was coming. It’s hard to get that many hits in a row.”

Lopez was stuck in a situation he could not get out of. He threw 36 pitches in the first inning, but the Marlins could not go to their bullpen that early. When he was finally pulled from the game, Lopez’s ERA balloon from 4.03 to 5.93.

The Marlins chances of winning tonight don’t get any easier as they face Jacob deGrom. While the reigning National League Cy Young winner doesn’t have the same statistics as last season, he is still one of the more dominant pitchers in baseball.

deGrom is 2-4 with a 3.60 ERA but does have 56 strikeouts this season.

In other news: The Marlins have purchased the contract of outfielder Harold Ramirez from Triple-A New Orleans. Ramirez has been on a tear in the Pacific Coast League.

Per Glenn Geffner on Twitter, “Harold Ramirez joins Jorge Alfaro and Tayron Guerrero to give the #Marlins 3 Colombian-born players, a first in #MLB history. Ramirez is the 22nd Colombian to reach MLB and joins Alfaro, Guerrero, Edgar Renteria, Donovan Solano, and Jhonatan Solano as one of 6 to play for Miami.”

The Marlins are now 10-28 for the season, which is the worst record the team has ever posted through the first 38 games in any season in the history of the franchise.