After 8th-inning breakout, Marlins on the cusp of clinch

PITTSBURGH -- You couldn’t blame the Marlins for coming out lethargic through the first seven innings of Friday night’s series opener against the Pirates at PNC Park. After all, their series finale against the Mets on Thursday was suspended at 12:49 a.m. ET, so they didn’t arrive in Pittsburgh until around 4 a.m.

But as they’ve done time and again during this magical season, the Marlins erased a three-run deficit with a four-run eighth in a 4-3 victory over the Pirates. Their magic number to clinch a postseason berth dropped to one, meaning they could do so as early as Saturday.

• Games remaining (3): at PIT (2), at NYM (1)

• Standings update: The Marlins (83-76) moved 1 1/2 games ahead of the Cubs (82-78) and the Reds (82-78) for the third NL Wild Card spot. Miami holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Cubs, having taken four of six in the season series. Miami tied the season series (3-3) with Cincinnati, but the Marlins (26-25 against the NL East) hold the second tiebreaker -- intradivisional record -- over the Reds (21-29 against the NL Central). The Marlins pulled within a half-game of the D-backs (84-76) for the second NL WC spot. Miami has the tiebreaker over Arizona.

• Magic number: 1 (to clinch postseason berth). Miami can clinch with either a win or Chicago AND Cincinnati losing.

• Path to the Postseason: The Marlins control their own destiny: Win one more game, and they're in the playoffs as a Wild Card. If the Marlins lose their next two games and the Cubs OR Reds win their next two, then Miami would have to fly to New York to complete its game from Thursday against the Mets on Monday. That game was suspended in the top of the 9th with the Marlins up, 2-1. In such a scenario -- and if the D-backs have already clinched; they earn a Wild Card berth with one more win -- Miami would need to win on Monday to create a threeway tie with the Cubs and Reds. The Marlins would win that tiebreaker and earn a Wild Card berth.

  A four-way tie in the Wild Card standings is still possible. If the Cubs and Reds both win both of their two remaining games, the D-backs lose their next two games and the Marlins lose their next two but beat the Mets on Monday, they would all finish the season with the same record. In that scenario, the Marlins and Reds would get the final two spots. Here's how every tiebreaker scenario breaks down.

Due to a combination of injuries to ace Sandy Alcantara and rookie Eury Pérez as well as Wednesday’s doubleheader, the Marlins will open with righty JT Chargois on Saturday. Sunday would also be a bullpen game. The suspended game in Queens will resume Monday if there are still postseason implications.

“I've said it before: Meaningful games right now are important for that clubhouse and for this organization,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “We talked about it in Spring Training. We weren't going after a winning record. We were going after, ‘Get in the playoffs and see what happens.’ We're getting closer, but we're not there yet. So no one's popping anything in there yet. This game is wild, the season's crazy. Nothing about it makes sense, really. And again, I've been on teams, we won the last game of the season to get in. So that's why I'm just day to day and hope to win tomorrow.”

Here are a few tidbits from Miami’s latest dramatic win:

• It was the Marlins’ 41st comeback victory, representing 49.4% of their season total
• They are an MLB-best 33-13 in one-run games
• It was their sixth win when trailing by three-plus runs at the end of the seventh, the most by an MLB team in a single season in the Modern Era, according to OptaSTATS

After four Pirates hurlers held the Marlins scoreless through 7 1/3 innings, Garrett Hampson and pinch-hitter Luis Arraez collected back-to-back singles before Jorge Soler walked to load the bases against righty Colin Selby. For Arraez, it marked his first at-bat since last Saturday, when he aggravated his left ankle tripping on the dugout steps as the lights went out for closer Tanner Scott’s entrance.

“Everybody knows I'm competing every day,” said Arraez, whose stare into the dugout his entire jog to first hyped up his club. “I missed playing with my teammates. I was out for five days or something like that. I hate watching games. I hate that. But this happened. My ankle is not good right now, but I can do something good there, and then I hit the ball to left field, and then I showed [out] to my brothers there, and we scored runs.”

Former Pirate Josh Bell then knocked a two-run double off the right-field wall. With the infield drawn in, Jake Burger knocked a game-tying RBI single to left to chase Selby. With runners at the corners, Jazz Chisholm Jr. lofted a go-ahead sacrifice fly to left-center against righty Carmen Mlodzinski.

“Right before the inning I was just telling them like, ‘Three ain't nothing to us. We've been doing this all year,’” Chisholm said. “It just starts off with one guy getting on, and we just come back as a team. This is the most contagious team in the league, I feel like. If one guy gets on, we've got something going, and we can do it all day. So I feel like if we start doing that early in the game, no team has a chance.”

Miami was in a position to rally because five relievers combined for 5 1/3 scoreless innings after right-hander Edward Cabrera was chased in the fourth. Scott’s wife Maddie, who gave birth to the couple's first child (Bo Alexander), told him to “make the postseason push” before he rejoined the ballclub in New York on Thursday. He was warming up for the bottom of the ninth before the game was suspended.

Scott tossed a perfect ninth on Friday in his first outing back from the paternity list.

“It's baseball,” said Scott, whose wife texted him after recording his 11th save. “You wake up and you're ready to go, especially in this last little stretch. We've got to make a push, so each win's huge.”