The Marlins ace is the leading candidate to win the NL Cy Young award and entered yesterday’s start in Philadelphia with a minuscule 1.88 ERA. He cruised through the first seven innings, allowing one run on two hits while throwing only 71 pitches. With his pitch count so low, he came back out to start the eighth—and that’s when the Phillies jumped on him.

Jean Segura reached on an infield single, then the Phillies strung together three more singles to plate two runs and tie the game at 3–3. After a double play, two more singles gave the Phillies a 4–3 lead. Seranthony Domínguez set the Marlins down one-two-three in the ninth to seal the victory.

“I was doing a pretty good job as soon as the first inning,” Alcantara told reporters after the game. “Inning by inning, I was going to the mound, attacking hitters, throwing my best stuff. I don’t know what happened there. I’ll have to see it in my locker tomorrow, watching video and see what happened.”

It was a rare display of mortality for Alcantara, whose ERA rose all the way to 2.01. That’s still the best in the National League and third-best in the majors. (Corbin Burnes is second in the NL at 2.45.) He’s also second in the NL with a 0.95 WHIP, behind only Burnes (0.93). Burnes is also a Cy Young candidate, but what sets Alcantara apart is his stamina and durability. He leads the majors with 166 innings pitched this year, way ahead of Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola in second place (144⅔). He’s thrown an MLB-best three complete games, including one shutout.

Alcantara is having a great season, but it didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. He’s been one of the few bright spots for the Marlins in recent years. Since he was acquired by Miami before the 2018 season, he hasn’t finished a season with an ERA over 3.88.

He does it by mixing his pitches well and throwing a nasty changeup. The changeup is his most frequently used pitch (26.7%), but he keeps hitters off balance by throwing the other three pitches in his arsenal just as frequently. He throws 25.2% fastballs, 25.1% sinkers and 22.5% sliders. The changeup is his most deadly weapon, though. Opponents are batting just .156 against it this season, according to Baseball Savant, and he gets hitters to whiff at it 35.3% of the time.

As for the Phillies, the win continued an impressive hot streak. They’ve won 12 of their last 13 and are now 62–48 on the season, well behind the first-place Mets in the NL East but good enough for the second wild-card spot. After a slow start to the season under Joe Girardi, they’re 40–19 under new manager Rob Thomson—and they’re doing it without Bryce Harper. He’s been out with a broken thumb since June 25 but is nearing a return. An elbow injury that had prevented him from playing the outfield since April is still bothering him, so he’ll be just a DH when he does come back. But the reigning MVP will be a welcome addition to a team in the thick of the playoff hunt.

The best of Sports Illustrated

In today’s Daily Cover, Ben Pickman explores the greatness of Sylvia Fowles, the WNBA legend who is retiring after this season:

On the court, the Lynx legend has certainly made the most of it, which, as her dunk during the 2022 All-Star Game displayed, has shown no signs of decaying. For 15 years, she has imposed her physicality in the paint, winning two WNBA titles, two Finals MVPs and four Olympic gold medals along the way. She is the league-record holder in total rebounds, field goal percentage and double doubles, and a member of the W’s 25th-anniversary team. As she’s done so, Fowles has become, in the words of reigning league MVP Jonquel Jones, “the player for the people.”

On the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Sandy Alcantara is Patrick Corbin, who might be having the worst season of any pitcher ever, Emma Baccellieri writes. … Albert Breer has three teams that might be interested in trading for Roquan Smith after he requested a trade out of Chicago. … Conor Orr breaks down the quarterbacks to watch during Week 1 of the NFL preseason.

Around the sports world

Deshaun Watson is expected to start the Browns’ preseason opener tomorrow. … Trevor Bauer has been sued for sexual battery. … The Tigers fired general manager Al Avila. … And then owner Chris Ilitch totally threw Avila under the bus in a press conference. … MLB won’t have a game next year at the Field of Dreams site. … This is an interesting story by Andrew Marchand of the New York Post about how Paul O’Neil’s vaccination status makes his number retirement ceremony difficult.

The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Ravens safety Tony Jefferson’s tweet about glasses.

4. Victor Caratini’s flawless throw to nab a runner attempting to steal.

3. Braves rookie Vaughn Grissom’s home run for his first MLB hit, topped off by an awesome bat flip. (His postgame interview was great, too.)

2. An even better bat flip in Korea by Jung Hoon.

1. This unbelievable free-kick goal by Costa Rica’s Alexandra Pinell.

SIQ

When the Giants lost at home to the Phillies on this date in 1951, the gap between them and the first-place Dodgers was the biggest it was all season. Though the Giants would eventually come back and tie Brooklyn to force the famous three-game playoff that ended with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” how many games did New York trail by after that loss to Philadelphia?

9 games
11 games
13 games
15 games

Yesterday’s SIQ: On Aug. 10, 1977, the Phillies and Expos played a doubleheader that featured rain delays in both games. The second game didn’t end until 3:23 a.m. But incredibly, that isn’t the longest doubleheader (including rain delays) in MLB history. How long did the record-setting twin bill take to play?

10 hours
11 hours
12 hours
13 hours

Answer: 12 hours (12 hours and five minutes, to be exact). Believe it or not, that matchup, which took place on July 2 (and 3), 1993, also featured the Phillies, who lost to the Padres in the first game but won the nightcap.

Never has the term nightcap been more apt. After the first game was delayed by rain three times (for a total of five hours and 54 minutes), the second game didn’t even start until after 1 a.m. and finished at 4:40 a.m., the latest in MLB history.

The 1977 doubleheader was similarly hellish. It had been scheduled as a twi-night doubleheader beginning at 5:35 p.m., and, after the first game was delayed by rain twice, it became clear that everybody was in for a long night. A rain delay during the second game brought the total length of the stoppages to four hours and 56 minutes. When the weather permitted, the players actually played at a really good pace. The first game took two hours and 11 minutes, the second took two hours and seven minutes. But thanks to the weather, the ordeal didn’t end until 3:23 a.m.

From the Vault: Aug. 10, 1970

International games are a regular part of the NFL schedule today—there will be five this season: three in London and one each in Munich and Mexico City—but they can trace their roots back to 1986 in London. When the Bears and Cowboys traveled there for a preseason game at a sold-out Wembley Stadium, SI sent Rick Telander to capture the scene. He explained that this was the first time the NFL had put the full force of its marketing machine behind promoting the game in a foreign country:

There have been other NFL exhibitions in foreign lands—Japan in 1975, Mexico City in 1978, London in 1983—but no other that was promoted by the league or carried the upbeat possibilities of the ’86 extravaganza. International TV rights? Product marketing? European expansion? The possibilities lie there like so many seeds waiting to be tended by the NFL's green thumb.

Telander’s story focuses heavily on the culture clash of NFL players traveling to England—there’s a great photo of five Bears players with a bunch of neon-haired punks—but his conclusion is that the experiment had been a success and would surely be followed by more games across the pond. He nailed it.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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