LOS ANGELES – Prior to Friday night’s series opener at Chavez Ravine, friends of Marlins center fielder Jazz Chisholm Jr., who were either fans of the Dodgers or playing for the club, kept reminding him of their 11-game win streak.

“I already told them, I was like, ‘You think we care about an 11-game win streak?’” Chisholm said. “‘Bro, we're trying to make it to the World Series, so an 11-game win streak could be broken any day.’”

The Marlins did just that by homering five times in a game for the first time since 2012 in support of ace Sandy Alcantara in an 11-3 win over the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. The new-look lineup featuring Trade Deadline acquisitions Josh Bell and Jake Burger also walked six times.

With the victory, the Marlins (64-59) remained tied with the Reds (64-59) for the third National League Wild Card spot. Head-to-head records will determine tiebreakers in the standings, but Miami and Cincinnati finished their season series capturing three games apiece. The clubs’ intradivisional record would break the tie. The Marlins are 14-19 vs. the NL East, while the Reds are 16-23 vs. the NL Central.

It has been a homer-happy week for Miami, which started it by going deep in three consecutive at-bats for just the second time in franchise history, and first since 1998, on Monday against the Astros.

Since Aug. 11, the Marlins rank sixth in the Majors in runs per game (5.86), fifth in slugging percentage (.468), tied for fifth in homers (11) and tied for fourth in extra-base hits (27). They improved to 6-1 when homering three or more times in a game this season.

Jorge Soler became the first Marlin since Chisholm on June 10, 2022, to blast a leadoff homer. He also was the eighth player in Marlins history (18th occurrence) to go deep twice from the leadoff spot, and the first since Chisholm in that same game against the Astros.

“We're hitting off good pitchers,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “That's the exciting part. These are big-name guys that we're hitting. Again, we talked a little bit about it earlier that the addition of Bell and Burger in the middle of the lineup, it really does lengthen it. It doesn't have to be just Soler, it can be other people. Not that it takes pressure off, but it can just feel like there's no easy outs, and that's the goal, and I think we're accomplishing that lately.”

Soler lined Tony Gonsolin’s curveball over the right-center wall to open the game, then crushed his four-seamer to left-center to begin a six-run third. Soler surpassed Yoenis Cespedes for the ninth-most homers (166) by a Cuban-born ballplayer in AL/NL history. Since taking over the leadoff spot on Aug. 8, Soler is batting .318 with four homers and six RBIs in six games.

“The way the lineup is set and we're scoring runs, let's not touch it,” Soler said via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “Let's leave it like that.”

Burger tattooed a three-run homer to straightaway center and Jacob Stallings followed two batters later with a two-run shot in the same vicinity to cap the six-run inning. Burger has a .923 OPS since joining the Marlins. In four games against the Dodgers this season, he has four homers and seven RBIs.

Chisholm joined the power surge with a three-run moonshot (41-degree launch angle) that just stayed fair in right to give the Marlins a 10-1 lead in the fourth and chase Gonsolin. 

“I definitely can see us attacking pitchers like that every night,” Chisholm said. “I feel like us as a team, when we get going as a team, like we're really unstoppable, especially when we're controlling the zone the way we controlled the zone tonight and not swinging at a lot of balls, knowing what the pitcher is trying to do to us and just letting him play into our game plan of staying inside the zone and letting him nibble and walk us and just keep on passing the baton.”

The beneficiary of all this offense was Alcantara, who entered Friday with an 18.00 ERA in three career starts at Dodger Stadium. Though he surrendered three homers across six innings, each led off a frame. In doing so, Alcantara won in back-to-back starts for the first time this season as he continued his strong second-half push (2.70 ERA).

“I got surprised today about my offense, [scoring] 11 runs here at Dodger Stadium,” Alcantara said. “I think everyone did good, and especially me, I was battling today and we won.”