Stanton ignites slugfest with 52nd home run

MIAMI -- Giancarlo Stanton wasted little time in bringing a Marlins Park crowd to its feet Saturday night in a 10-9 win that snapped a five-game losing streak. The Major League leader in home runs blasted his 52nd of the season in the first inning to stake Miami to a 1-0 lead it never relinquished.
The Marlins' right fielder belted a 1-1 pitch from Phillies starter Aaron Nola over the left-center-field fence, just to the left of the home run sculpture, which the slugger has touched off so many times this season. It was his 26th homer of the second half, a club record, as is his season total.
According to Statcast™, Stanton's blast traveled 445 feet and had an exit velocity of 115.3 mph. It is the slugger's fifth-hardest homer of the season. Stanton has now hit 31 homers in his last 52 games and is on pace to hit 62 home runs this season.

"It was good, put us on top early," Stanton said. "I put a good swing on it."
The towering shot was followed two batters later by Marcell Ozuna, who clubbed his 32nd home run of the season into the left-field seats, scoring Christian Yelich, who singled, giving the Marlins a 3-0 lead. With that, the hit parade was on. Miami reeled of 17 knocks altogether.

Ozuna's homer gave the Marlins multiple home runs in an inning for the 17th time this season. That's the most since setting the club record with 20 multi-homer innings in 2008.
"We had a bad couple of days there, but we did good tonight; 1 through 9 did a good job," Stanton said.

The Marlins got hits from all nine spots in the batting order. None was bigger than a seventh-inning pinch-hit three-run homer from Derek Dietrich. It was his third career pinch-hit homer.
In addition, Dee Gordon added two hits and has now posted seven consecutive multi-hit games, one short of his career best and the club record of eight set by Chris Coghlan from Aug. 1-9, 2009. Gordon has hit .500 (15-for-30) in that span.

Stanton now has eight home runs against the Phillies this season, the most in club history against a single opponent in a single season, breaking the record held by seven players.
The mammoth homer was Stanton's ninth homer and 18th RBI in his last 12 games. He doesn't just hit them far; he hits them just as hard. With the fifth-hardest home run of the season, and fourth since August, Stanton has now hit six homers of 115-plus mph this season, second to the Yankees' Aaron Judge (8).
Stanton appeared to tweak his left wrist after striking out in the second inning, but remained in the game and showed no ill effects from it. He said after the game that the wrist is fine.