MIAMI _ Twenty-one seasons have passed since Gary Sheffield set the bar for Marlins sluggers to aim for when he hit 42 home runs in 1996.
Giancarlo Stanton became the team's most prolific home run hitter a while ago. Friday the four-time All-Star joined Sheffield as the only to hit 40 in a season when he drove a slider from Colorado Rockies right-hander Jon Gray 433 feet to left field at Marlins Park.
Stanton's homer sparked a two-run rally to tie the game in the sixth. Derek Dietrich's bloop single in the eighth sent a hustling Christian Yelich home with the go-ahead run and Tomas Telis added a two-run triple to propel the Marlins to a 6-3 victory.
Stanton's homer was his seventh in his past eight games and 14th in 26 games since the All-Star break. As dialed in as the All-Star right fielder has been, it seems inevitable, if not imminent, that he will obliterate Sheffield's single-season mark.
Stanton struck out looking in the seventh against sidearm reliever Pat Neshek on a pitch that FoxTrax showed was a couple inches off the outside corner.
Although Stanton's blast energized the Marlins, they had a couple not-so-uplifting moments early in the game. If the reported agreement for the sale of the team to a group led by Derek Jeter does through, the new owner should make video of the way he played required viewing for his players.
It was never with the laissez faire approach that cost the Marlins some prime scoring chances early in the game.
It was more like Yelich correctly reading that the ball Dietrich hit to center would drop in and wasting no time racing home from second in the eighth.
Earlier, the Jeter-like example was demonstrated by Rockies left fielder Gerardo Parra in throwing out two dawdling Marlins runners and smashing a home run, one of two allowed by Marlins starter Jose Urena.
The embarrassing misadventures on the base paths began in the third inning when Dee Gordon ran the Marlins out of their first threat against Gray. Gordon took a lackadaisical, circle route on the way from first to third on Stanton's laser-like single to left and was thrown out by Parra to end the inning.
The next inning, Marcell Ozuna hit a popup near the left-field line that fell for a hit among converging Rockies. Ozuna apparently thought one of them would catch it because he jogged out of the box.
By the time he turned on the jets it was too late. Parra threw him out at second.
Parra then precipitated Urena's exit when he drove a 2-2 slider 380 feet into the seats in right leading off the sixth.
Urena, the odd-man out of the Marlins' starting staff when the season began, has climbed to de facto ace amid the turmoil of injuries and failures that have wracked the rotation
While Dan Straily has faltered since the All-Star break (0-4, 5.17 ERA), Urena has been steadily on the rise. But it's a slippery slope, as has been demonstrated often this season as the Marlins have already gone through 11 different starters.
Facing one of the best hitting teams in the National League, Urena was erratic but reasonably effective, except for homers by Parra and Nolan Arenado.
The All-Star third baseman reached out and clubbed a changeup on the outer half of the plate the opposite way for his 26th homer, a two-run shot in the third. It came with All-Star center fielder Charlie Blackmon aboard after leading off the inning with a double, and made Arenado the first to 100 RBIs in the majors this season.
Urena left trailing 3-1 with one in the fifth after hitting Jonathan Lucroy and leaving two runners aboard. He threw 98 pitches to get that far in a laborious outing.
Reliever Dustin McGowan stranded the runners with a pair of strikeouts to keep the deficit at two runs and make the eventual turnaround possible.
