Stanton homers in win over Oakland

Slugger settles in to No. 2 lineup spot

MIAMI — Sometime soon, when their injured players aren’t injured anymore, the Miami Marlins will have a few personnel decisions to make — roster spots, defensive alignments, lineup tweaks and the like.

Manager Don Mattingly knows it’s coming, and he freely admits some of those decisions will be tougher than others. But he also knows how he’ll handle at least one of them: Giancarlo Stanton won’t move from the No. 2 spot in the lineup, not even when third baseman Martin Prado returns, which could be as soon as the end of next week if his rehab assignment goes smoothly.

Stanton homered again in the Marlins’ 8-1 win over the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday, showing again that the move Mattingly made in part on a whim three weeks ago has worked.

And so Prado, the Marlins’ No. 2 hitter when healthy since the start of last season and for stretches before that, will find a new offensive home.

“It’s going pretty well. I don’t really want to mess with that,” Mattingly said Tuesday afternoon. “We’ll figure it out as we go. I don’t know if everybody is in

the lineup every day, but I think in general we don’t move G around. G’s doing well.”

Stanton’s dinger Tuesday was a part of Miami’s game-winning rally in the fifth, five consecutive twoout hits to turn a tie into a four-run cushion against Oakland starter Jharel Cotton (five innings, five runs). It landed about 398 feet from home — modest by Stanton’s standards — but peaked at 152 feet, his tallest since MLB began tracking such data in 2015.

Before Stanton, Dee Gordon slapped a runscoring single to left. After Stanton, J.T. Realmuto doubled to right-center to score Christian Yelich, who had reached on a soft grounder toward shortstop.

Right-hander Jose Urena turned in his best outing in a month: six innings, one run. He allowed only three hits and one walk, and he struck out four.

Urena’s night was marred only by a three-batter stretch and a balk in the second inning. The A’s bookended Chad Pinder’s hit-by-pitch with hard-hit singles from Yonder Alonso and Matt Joyce to load the bases with one out. With two outs, Urena balked, allowing Alonso.

Urena rebounded by retiring his next 13 batters, pitching into the seventh.

Marcell Ozuna reached base in all four tries, going 3 for 3 with a walk. His homer — to right-center, off the face of the upper deck — in the fourth tied it.

Tyler Moore also had a three-hit night. He doubled twice, the second scoring a pair of runs in the seventh.

Oakland’s last threat came in the seventh, when it put its first two runners on against Urena. Righty David Phelps entered and got the next three batters, including two looking at called strike three.

Ichiro Suzuki’s pinch-hit single in the eighth moved him into a tie with Derek Jeter for the all-time interleague hits record with 364.

LYNNE SLADKY/AP Giancarlo Stanton, tracks his two-run home run during the fifth inning on Tuesday in Miami.