Marlins shutout loss to Giants overshadows strong performance from pitcher Pablo Lopez

Pablo Lopez’s fastball command wasn’t the sharpest on Sunday against the San Francisco Giants, so the Miami Marlins’ starting pitcher went with a different plan of attack.

Lopez fired off heavy doses of his changeup, his main secondary offering, in an attempt to keep Giants hitters off track.

It worked. Lopez gave up just one unearned run over six innings and struck out a career-high nine batters — all with the changeup.

But Lopez received zero run support as the Marlins lost 1-0 to the Giants at loanDepot park to close out a three-game series and miss out on a series sweep. Miami (7-8) has won six of its last eight games, with both losses coming by one run.

“You’re not going to let one game set you back,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “It’s a tough one to lose when you have pitching like that. ... It’s just one of those days.”

The Marlins won the first two games of the series 4-1 on Friday and 7-6 (10 innings) on Saturday with late-inning rallies.

They were down a run after four innings on Friday before Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit a game-tying home run in the fifth and Starling Marte hit a go-ahead three-run home run in the eighth.

They were down two runs after seven innings on Saturday before a two-run rally in the ninth forced extra innings and Jorge Alfaro won it with a two-run, walk-off double in the 10th.

There was no such rally on Sunday.

The Giants (9-6) held Miami to three hits, two of which came in the first two at-bats of the game. Miguel Rojas hit a leadoff single to center and Marte’s bunt single gave Miami runners at first and second with no outs in the first.

A baserunning gaffe resulted in Rojas being tagged out between second and third before Jesus Aguilar grounded out and Garrett Cooper struck out swinging. Rojas said postgame he made the call to steal third.

San Francisco starter Alex Wood, making his season debut, retired 12 consecutive batters before Brian Anderson reached on a fielding error with one out in the fifth and Chisholm hit a single on the next at-bat but was tagged out after lifting his knee off the second-base bag trying to turn the play into a double.

San Francisco’s bullpen then threw four scoreless innings to secure the win.

The offense fell flat on a day when Lopez kept the Marlins in the game despite having shaky command at points.

Lopez held the Giants to five hits and a pair of walks (one intentional) while making it through six innings for the second time in four starts this season.

And with his fastball command out of sorts at time, Lopez dialed up his changeup when he needed it the most. The result: 13 of the 18 outs he recorded, including all nine of his strikeouts, ended with him throwing a changeup.

Lopez said he made some minor mechanical adjustments following his last start against the Atlanta Braves to give his changeup more life.

“The focus every time we threw the changeup was to think down and let the grip do the work,” Lopez said. “Sometimes we have to go back to the basics and that less is more.”

The only run Lopez gave up, a two-out groundball RBI single to Alex Dickerson in the third inning, came one at-bat after a Jesus Aguilar fielding error that would have ended the inning.

Ironically enough, Dickerson’s go-ahead hit came on a changeup — one of just two times on Sunday the Giants recorded a hit off the pitch against Lopez.

▪ Marte was removed from the game in the middle of an at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with an apparent left oblique injury. Jorge Alfaro took over the at-bat with a 1-1 count. Alfaro grounded out to shortstop to end the game.

Mattingly said postgame Marte would undergo tests to find out the severity of the injury. The team has an off day Monday before hosting the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“The one thing we didn’t want to do,” Mattingly said, “is take another swing and do more damage. Obviously there’s something. Didn’t want him taking another swing at that point and then tear it or rip it or make it worse.”