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🎙️ Vin Scully Recaps NLCS Game 5
Miami Marlins 10
San Francisco Giants 4
📍 LoanDepot Park
Series: Giants lead 3 games to 2
Well, on a warm October afternoon in South Florida, with the breeze drifting gently toward left field and 52,912 looking on, the Marlins found both their bats and their resolve.
The Giants arrived one victory away from another National League pennant. They will have to wait.
The afternoon belonged to a designated hitter with a golden swing — Octavio Flores.
Flores was simply magnificent. Four hits in five trips. A home run in the third inning to begin the scoring. Three ringing doubles. Five runs driven home. Ten total bases. And with each crack of the bat, the Marlins breathed a little easier.
In the third inning, Miami strung together five hits and four runs. Tomoo Kawazu lined a single to right to plate one. Chris Grissett followed with another. Holden Daggett delivered yet another base hit. It was a relentless rally — line drives finding grass, the ball skipping across the infield, the Giants chasing.
By the fourth, Flores was at it again, doubling home John Evans to extend the lead.
And in the sixth, when there was a faint murmur that perhaps San Francisco might inch back into the game, the Marlins answered with authority. Evans doubled. Flores doubled again. Manny Sigaran singled him home. Three more runs. An 8–0 advantage.
Jonathan Parker simply could not find the answer. Eight earned runs in five innings, and afterward Giants manager Danny Wallace said it plainly: “We didn’t pitch good, and when you don’t pitch good, you lose.”
Bobby Cardenas, meanwhile, gave Miami exactly what it required. Eight sturdy innings. Four runs allowed. He bent a bit in the eighth when Edgar Perdomo launched a two-run homer into the Miami afternoon, and again in the ninth when Jeremy Dick tripled and Greg Price lifted a sacrifice fly. But the margin was too wide, and the Marlins too steady.
Flores returned in the eighth for one final flourish — a double to score Evans, tying a National League postseason record with three doubles in a game.
And so the final score: Miami 10, San Francisco 4.
The Giants still lead the series three games to two. But the tone has changed ever so slightly. The flight now shifts west to Oracle Park, where the cool air by the bay will replace the Florida warmth.
Game Six awaits on Sunday in San Francisco.
And if this series has taught us anything, it is this:
In October, nothing is granted.
Everything must be earned.
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