Stanton’s 38th HR helps send Miami past Washington
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Giancarlo Stanton began the season with questions — not from him, but about him, and there were plenty. Could he stay healthy? Is he worth the money? How would he respond to being, unquestionably, the Miami Marlins’ marquee player? Was he even that good anymore?
The best answer — aside from so far, mostly, pretty well and definitely yes — to all of those came in the Marlins’ 7-3 win over the Washington Nationals on Tuesday. Stanton hit his career-high 38th home run of the season, a soaring shot that landed a projected 438 feet from the plate in leftcenter, to put Miami ahead for good in the fifth inning.
Seventeen of Stanton’s long balls have given the Marlins a lead, the most in baseball. His last five home runs have come in five games on this road trip that ends Thursday. He is also four shy of the Marlins’ single-season record of 42.
Stanton’s 2017 total, also tops in the majors, breaks a tie with his 2012 and 2014 seasons, which included him missing several weeks due to injury. This year, he has avoided such setbacks, starting in 105 and playing in 109 of the team’s 111 games.
His mere presence in the lineup has been critical to what might be Stanton’s best year yet, one that has reestablished him as one of the sport’s preeminent sluggers.
“He’s a guy, for me, if he’s on the field and he stays on the field, he’s going to hit 40 to 50 every year,” manager Don Mattingly said Monday night. “That’s just what’s going to happen if he stays on the field. Any time he’s been cut short has really been because some little weird injury.”
Remember when Stanton had a scorching July? He hit .280/.407/.731 with 12 homers and 23 RBI. And yet in the first week of August, those numbers were .364/.440⁄1.000 with four homers and seven RBI.
Stanton was the show, but the Marlins did play a well-rounded game Tuesday.
Right-hander Vance Worley was very good against the Nationals, the team that cut him at the end of spring training, for the second time in a week. He held them to one run in six innings, a serviceable encore to his seven shutout at Marlins Park last time around.
On Tuesday, he scattered six hits and three walks while striking out two. The Nationals went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position and left seven runners on base against him. Their run scored on Bryce Harper’s third-inning ground out to second.
The Marlins reached right-hander A.J. Cole for four runs in five innings, then got to the Washington bullpen — revamped in advance of last week’s trade deadline — for three more.
Derek Dietrich (2 for 5) drove in three runs, one on a solo shot to right in the fourth and two on a basesloaded single in the seventh. Dee Gordon (2 for 4) added a run that inning with a ground-rule double.