Ellis, Stanton HRs seal sweep
Marlins blow 4-run lead in seventh inning
SAN FRANCISCO Eleventh-inning home runs fromA.J. Ellis, his first of the year, and Giancarlo Stanton, his second of the day, lifted the Miami Marlins to a 10-8 win over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, completing the weekend sweep and the team’s first half.
The Marlins gathered a modicum of momentum heading into the All-Star break, during which Stanton and Marlins Park will be in the spotlight, trending upward albeit with a 41-46 record. They haven’t been closer to .500 since May 7.
“I hope it says we’re going to have a good second half,” manager Don Mattingly said.
Ellis’s long ball stood as the game-winner. Pinchhitting as Mattingly’s last position-player option off the bench, Ellis was in an 0-2 hole before righty George Kontos left a cutter over the plate. It landed in left-center for his second homer in14months andhis first career pinch-hit long ball.
Afterward, Ellis took some ribbing from teammates about the ball being juiced— the idea that, with home runs being hit at historic rates, there is something different about the baseballs being used.
Major League Baseball has said the baseballs are the same.
“Maybe I’m more a believernowthan Iwas about 45 minutes ago,” Ellis said with a smile. “We’ll have to await further testing.”
Stanton followed with a shot to a similar spot for an insurance run. His 26th homer of the year is the third-best first-half total in Marlins history. It was also his fifth multi-homer game of the year.
“I was able to squeeze one out, and then G was able to show me how to really hit one,” Ellis said.
TheMarlins held a fourrun advantage in the seventh inning, but David Phelps (one run in one inning) and Kyle Barraclough (three runs in onethird of an inning) combined to blow it. The run off Phelps scored when Stanton dropped a two-out fly ball in right field. It was ruled a double for Denard Span.
Righty Nick Wittgren picked up the win with four strikeouts in two scoreless innings.
Right-hander Jose Urena allowed three runs in five innings, a seventh consecutive start in which he lasted at least that long and allowed no more than that many earned runs.
He got burned on two pitches: a 3-1 fastball over the plate to Brandon Crawford for a two-run homer in the second, and a 2-2 changeup on the outer edge of the zone to Nick Hundley for a solo shot in the fifth.
The Marlins scored two runs in the third on backtodoubles from Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna and one run in the fifth on Stanton’s homer to center.
Justin Bour added a two-run single in the team’s four-run seventh.
After ties in the third, fifth and eighth innings, multiple fly balls lost in the sun and an emptied bench, the Marlins came away with it. As they went their separate ways for a few days, theywere happy with that.
“Not a game the way we really want to play it, but it ended up theway youwant it to go,” Mattingly said. “A lot of crazy things out there, but at the end of the daywe did enough to win.”
Locke