Stanton’s HR quest on hold
Two games left to reach 60 after comeback defeats Atlanta.
MIAMI — One of the hardest balls Giancarlo Stanton hit all night Friday was a foul screamer into the Marlins’ dugout that nearly took out teammate Dee Gordon. The close call brought a smile to Gordon, who then pointed toward the outfield as if to say, “Hit it there.”
Stanton did eventually do that.
But it wasn’t the outcome a crowd of 19,527 hungered to see, a home run that would have raised Stanton’s season total to 60. Instead, Stanton settled for a rocket double as his quest to become the sixth player in major league history to hit 60 was put on hold.
Stanton has two games remaining in which to reach the milestone.
On Friday, though, his double and an infield hit contributed to a 6-5 Marlins victory over the Braves in which they rallied from a 5-0 defificit.
After Dan Straily was knocked out
early by giving up five runs, the Marlins roared back late, scoring t wo runs in the sixth and four more in the seventh.
Marcell Ozuna drove in three runs, raising his season total to 122, while Stanton drove in his 130th run of the season with a weak infield hit.
Other highlights
■ Justin Bour came up with the big hit in the seventh, a broken- bat single that scored the tying and go-ahead runs.
■ Ichiro Suzuki popped out in his attempt to tie John Vander Wal’s record for most pinch hits in a season with 28. Suzuki’s next hit will tie him with Cap Anson for 21st on the all- time list with 3,081.
Housecleaning: Derek Jeter, who takes over as Marlins’ CEO and co-owner next week, has quietly fifired four members of the team’s baseball operations department, in the wake of dismissing five prominent team employees last week, according to sources.
And Jeter, once again, asked outgoing Marlins President David Samson to fifire the employees for him, according to a source.
Jeter asked Samson to dismiss vice president of player development Marc DelPiano, assistant general manager Mike Berger, vice president/ player personnel Jeff McAvoy and vice president/pitching development Jim Benedict. All were informed by Samson in recent days.
DelPiano’s dismissal is the most surprising of the group. Owner Jeffrey Loria lured him away from the Pirates before the 2015 season — where he had most recently served as assistant to the general manager — and DelPiano had worked in the past t wo years to help establish a new culture within the Marlins’ minor league operations.
The Marlins’ farm system had been considered among the worst in baseball before the well-regarded DelPiano arrived, and the team still has fewer highlevel prospects than most other organizations.
DelPiano also worked for the Marlins in 2002-05.
Loria and his front offiffice thought so highly of Benedic t that they traded a player, pitcher Trevor Williams, to acquire him from the Pirates in November 2015. Williams was 7-9 with a 4.07 ERA for the Pirates this season and might have been the Marlins’ third-best starting pitcher this year if he hadn’t been traded for an executive.
But Benedict had mixed results in his role as a roving organizational pitching guru. He helped extract more from several pitchers, including Kyle Barraclough, but failed to do so with Andrew Cashner, Justin Nicolino and Adam Conley, among others, and one free-agent pitcher he recommended from the Pirates, Jeff Locke, never helped the Marlins this season and was designated for assignment on July 4.
Berger spent four seasons as the Marlins’ assistant GM.
McAvoy, who previously worked with Tampa Bay, spent two seasons as the Marlins’ vice president/ player personnel.