Not when Tommy John surgery robbed him of the 2024 season. Not when 2025 ended in a disappointing 11-12 record, and a 5.36 ERA.<\/p>\n
Instead, he \u201calways kept the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alcantara threw the first complete game of the MLB season in a 93-pitch shutout on Wednesday, leading the Miami Marlins<\/a> to a 10-0 domination of the Chicago White Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was Alcantara\u2019s second career shutout with fewer than 100 pitches, known as a \u201cMaddux\u201d in honour of Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.<\/p>\n Alcantara also threw his 13th career complete game and fifth shutout.<\/p>\n \u201cMany negative things happened last year but that didn\u2019t hold me back trying to be better,\u201d Alcantara said. \u201cThis year, I am going to give my best every time, win more games and be more aggressive in counts. Today, as a club, we did a tremendous job.\u201d<\/p>\n The White Sox did not have a hitter reach second as Alcantara (2-0) scattered three singles, hit a batter and struck out seven. After a dominant outing against Colorado in the season-opener, the 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner extended his scoreless streak to 15 innings.<\/p>\n Alcantara used six pitches to shut down the White Sox. Although his changeup and four-seam fastball were mostly used in his outing, Alcantara also utilized his slider, sweeper, sinker and cutter to carve through the Chicago lineup.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything was working. Everything was good today,\u201d Alcantara said. \u201cI think I did a great job, trying to not miss much.\u201d<\/p>\n Alcantara\u2019s battery mate Liam Hicks continued his torrid offensive start as he homered, had two singles and drove in four runs to give him a major league-leading 12 RBIs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was fun,\u201d Hicks said of catching Alcantara\u2019s gem. \u201cHe had a lot of pitches working. When you\u2019re back there and he\u2019s rolling like that, it\u2019s cool to see. It makes your job catching easy.\u201d<\/p>\n As Alcantara accumulated quick outs, the decision became easier for manager Clayton McCullough to allow his ace to pitch the ninth. With Alcantara needing only three pitches to retire the White Sox in the eighth, it became an easy call.<\/p>\n \u201cI gave him a thumbs up and he gave me a thumbs up,\u201d McCullough said.<\/p>\n He called the outing remarkable.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to do that today, to go nine innings with how you view workload,” McCullough said. “Hitters are good. He was so efficient and guys played great behind him.\u201d<\/p>\n There were 29 complete games thrown last season, and pitchers threw just 13 shutouts, the lowest in a non-shortened season since 1873.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not when Tommy John surgery robbed him of the 2024 season. Not when 2025 ended in a disappointing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-576077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}