Miami Marlins get out of late jam and hold on to beat New York Mets to open series

Miami Marlins reliever Steven Okert entered the game Friday with very little room for error.

Bases loaded. One out in the seventh inning. A one-run lead. Francisco Lindor coming to the plate for the National League East-leading New York Mets.

Okert quickly got ahead in the count 0-2 against Lindor before firing a slider near the bottom of the strike zone. Lindor swung. The ball rolled on the ground to the left side of the infield. Third baseman Jon Berti clutched the ball and threw to second baseman Charles Leblanc, who quickly made the turn to Garrett Cooper at first to complete the inning-ending double play.

“Didn’t expect to get a ground ball. Don’t get a ton of those,” said Okert, who entered Friday with a 37.7-percent groundball rate, well below the MLB average of 44.9 percent. “But I mean I’ve had a few at-bats against him now, so we had our plan. It worked today. Worked out the best it could have.”

Two innings later, the Marlins walked off the field at loanDepot park with a 6-3 win over the Mets to begin a three-game series.

The Marlins improve to 57-80 and have now won back-to-back games for the first time since Aug. 22-23 against the Oakland Athletics.

Okert also pitched a scoreless eighth inning before Dylan Floro pitched a shutout ninth inning for his fourth save of the season one night after he pitched the two innings of Miami’s win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

“Every out you get as you get towards the end of the game, it’s big,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “Okie [Okert] gets us out of a jam there and then we’re able to close it out there with Okie and Flo.”

It backed a solid night from Edward Cabrera. The 24-year-old rookie right-handed pitcher held the Mets (87-52) to three earned runs on five hits and two walks over 5 2/3 innings.

Both walks came in the sixth inning. As did two of the runs on a Pete Alonso home run on a two-out, two-strike slider that caught more of the plate than Cabrera wanted.

Other than that, Cabrera’s only real trouble came in the third inning when he gave up three consecutive one-out hits — a Tomas Nido double, Brandon Nimmo RBI single and Lindor single — before limiting the damage to just one run by getting Jeff McNeil to hit into an inning-ending double play.

It also backed another good showing by the offense, fueled by Cooper, catcher Nick Fortes and shortstop Miguel Rojas. Cooper had three hits and reached base in all four of his plate appearances while finishing a triple shy of the cycle. He opened scoring with a two-run home run and also scored on a Fortes double in the fifth. Fortes finished the night with three hits. Rojas had two doubles and an RBI.

Leblanc gave the Marlins insurance runs with a two-run home run in the eighth.

Miami has now recorded at least 10 hits three consecutive games, a first for the Marlins this season.

“It’s nice to have activity where you’re getting guys out there,” Mattingly said. “It started turning in Philly, the second game [Wednesday]. It’s just good to see. It makes it a lot easier when you’re putting some runs up.”