Despite being short on pitching, Marlins pull off the shutout

[Kevin Barral]

MIAMI, FL - Heavy recent usage of their bullpen forced the Miami Marlins to get creative on Wednesday night. The unlikely combination of Ryan Gusto, Victor Vodnik, Janson Junk and Dax Fulton held the Boston Red Sox scoreless to salvage the series finale.

Gusto threw 5 ⅔ shutout innings, allowing four hits, three walks and struck out two. He lowered his ERA to 1.85 in the month of August, and on the season, he now has a 3.98 ERA. His 77.8% ground ball rate on the night was the highest of his season. During this August stretch, he's only had one outing where he's allowed more than three runs, which came in a win against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Just over a year after the trade that sent him to Miami from the Houston Astros, Gusto describes himself as a "different pitcher than the one I was traded for originally."

"I think that development isn't linear and it's a good time to look back on that and acknowledge that," Gusto said postgame. "The coaching staff believed in me the whole way and kept working with me on the things that we needed to work on, and I'm really happy with the trend that we've been seeing."

One of Gusto's year-to-year improvements has been his fastball velocity. His fastball previously averaged 94.1 mph, but on Wednesday, he averaged 95.3 mph and topped out at 97.4 mph. He threw 12 pitches of 95 mph or more in his start.

"Ryan deserves a lot of credit," Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said. "The velocity being where it's at so consistently certainly helped, but he's put a lot of work in the weight room as well. He comes over last year and is acclimating to new organization, we're asking a lot of him, and it's taken Ryan some time to really buy in, but I think Ryan has seen how a lot of these adjustments and the hard work he's putting in is paying off. Ryan has taken some real steps professionally, personally, that I think now we're seeing the fruits of."

One of the few Marlins relievers who was available, Vodnik entered with two outs in the sixth inning. He struck out Anthony Seigler to complete the sixth. In the seventh, he induced three straight groundouts. Vodnik hasn't allowed an earned run in any of his last six appearances.

Already scheduled to throw his pitch design on Wednesday, the Marlins asked Janson Junk the night before how he felt about pitching an inning out of the bullpen to fill in for his overworked teammates. After going through a pregame routine, Junk felt good enough to pitch. This marked the first time since June 14 of last season that he entered a game as a relief pitcher. In his lone inning of work, Wilyer Abreu flew out, Caleb Durbin grounded out and Mickey Gasper lined out.

"The biggest thing for me was just the routine," Junk said. "It's been a while since I came out of the pen, so just figuring out what my role was for the day. Luckily enough, they were very clear on what that was, so that eased some of the nerves. They told me the little pocket that I was going to be in and from there, it was understood what it was when I was getting warmed up in the bullpen."

With the Marlins leading 2-0, Dax Fulton, who was recalled from Triple-A Jacksonville one day before the game, was warming up to pitch in the ninth inning for what would be his first career save. For the Marlins, they tacked on two runs in the ninth inning, so Fulton entered the game with a 4-0 lead. After allowing a lead-off base hit, Fulton struck one out and induced two groundouts to end the game.

The Marlins 4-0 win marked the 13th shutout win of the 2026 season, which is also the team's most since 2014, when they had 16 shutouts.

The Marlins are now 68-66, which puts them four games out of the third National League Wild Card spot. The Marlins will spend an off day in Washington before kicking off a four-game wraparound series with Eury Pérez taking the mound in the first game on Friday.

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