MIAMI — Daniel Castano found himself in trouble early on Sunday against one of Major League Baseball’s top lineups this season. The New York Mets had five hits — all hard-hit, all going for extra bases — against the Miami Marlins’ left-handed pitcher through the first three innings of the series finale at loanDepot park. The final of those hits, a Pete Alonso double, gave the Mets their first lead of the game.
And then he settled in. Castano retired 14 of the final 15 batters he faced, throwing a career-high seven innings to keep the Marlins in the game.
Nick Fortes hit a walk-off home run against Adam Ottavino to lead Miami to a 3-2 win over the New York Mets to avoid a series sweep. The Marlins (33-38) dropped the first two games of the series on Friday and Saturday by identical 5-3 scores. The Mets are 47-27.
The late heroics backed up a strong outing from Castano, who held the Mets to two runs on five hits and two walks while striking out four over seven innings.
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 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.
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 Miguel 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.
