WASHINGTON -- As catcher Joe Mack approached third base at Nationals Park on Tuesday night, his face broke into a smile.
Almost a month after Mack’s Major League debut, he’d finally done it: He went yard.
But that wasn’t all. Mack’s two-run blast to right-center field in the fifth inning against the Nats ended Washington’s no-hitter bid and kicked off a sequence that had happened only twice prior in Marlins history: a set of back-to-back-to-back home runs.
After Mack crossed home plate to be celebrated in the dugout, it was Heriberto Hernández’s turn to go yard, sending a ball a Statcast-projected 403 feet into center field. But the fun wasn’t done there, as Otto Lopez completed the three homers in a row with a Statcast-projected 414-foot blast of his own to left field.
The trio of homers were the Marlins’ first set of back-to-back-to-back shots since Aug. 14, 2023, when Jorge Soler, Luis Arraez and Josh Bell all went yard against the Astros. The first and only other set of three straight homers for the Marlins came on Aug. 26, 1998, when Derrek Lee, Cliff Floyd and Kevin Orie went deep against the Cardinals.
But it was Mack’s Statcast-projected 410-foot homer that set the tone for the Fish, who had homered thrice the night prior after going deep just twice as a team in the week prior. The trip to Washington represented a prime opportunity for the Marlins to find their slug again -- an opportunity they took … and took and took.