The Miami Marlins have virtually the same winning percentage as the New York Mets. They've been flying, er, swimming under the radar, but they have some swagger going.
And now it looks like they may finally have their slugger going too.
Giancarlo Stanton, known to all as a very muscly man who mashes many homers, has spent most of the 2016 season in the kind of slump that could crush a less muscly man. It was only about a week ago that he was hitting just .193 through his first 55 games.
But now, things are looking up. Stanton found his bearings in a recent four-game set against the Colorado Rockies at Marlins Park, and he kept the good times rolling in a 4-2 win over the Chicago Cubs on Thursday.
The Marlins' right fielder began his day by clouting a mighty clout, his 14th, off lefty ace Jon Lester in the fourth inning, knotting the score at 1-1:
Later, in the eighth inning, Stanton finished his day by poking an RBI single to right field that gave the Marlins a 3-2 lead. They wouldn't have won without him, which is basically saying the Marlins got a taste of the way things are supposed to be in Thursday's game.
The way Stanton is going, there could be more of that on the way. He's hit .400 with a couple of home runs over his last six games. That's a small sample size, of course, but it's a reminder this is the same guy who OPS'd .921 and averaged 32 homers a season over the previous five years.
By contrast, the Stanton the Marlins were seeing over the previous few weeks looked like a hitter who was completely lost. In addition to struggling to reach the Mendoza Line, he was striking out in 34.8 percent of his plate appearances. For a couple of weeks in May, he was mired in a 4-for-48 slump.
"I have to keep working at it," Stanton told George Richards of the Miami Herald late last month. "I have to keep moving, progress. Don't worry about the [numbers], worry about the work you're doing and the process of that."
One thing Stanton was powerless to control, though, was how he was being pitched. Dayn Perry of CBS Sports noticed the 26-year-old was seeing an unusually high number of sliders in 2016. As Brooks Baseball can show, his percentage of all breaking balls has shot up:
With this being the case, it's hard to blame Stanton either for making contact on only a third of his swings at pitches outside the strike zone or, in a related story, his career-high 16.5 percent swinging-strike rate.
On the bright side, it never hurts to have one of the most dominant hitters of all time in your corner. And in this case, he was more than happy to help.
"He wanted to get out and work on some things, just tracking the ball and doing some little things," Marlins hitting coach/legendary slugger of yore Barry Bonds said last month of his work with Stanton, per the Associated Press, via ESPN. "I just stepped in there to give him couple of breaks."
It's hard to tell if Stanton's work with Bonds has resulted in any mechanical changes. But working on tracking the ball could translate into trying to see the ball longer. And the deeper a hitter lets the ball get into the hitting zone, the more likely he is to whack it to the opposite field.
Lo and behold, check out the righty swinger's before and after usage of right field:
- First 55 G: 17.8%
- Next 5 G: 31.3%
In knocking both his home run and his go-ahead single to right field, Stanton continued this trend Thursday. This isn't likely to be his M.O. the rest of the year, but it could be just what he needs to get comfortable again and ultimately find himself back atop baseball's list of most feared sluggers.
For the Marlins, there's no overstating how huge that would be.
They're already good, as their 39-34 record puts them a mere percentage point behind the New York Mets (38-33) in the NL East standings. They are where they are partially because of a pitching staff that owns one of the 10 best ERAs in baseball, and partially because their collective .737 OPS arguably underrates their offense.
When the Marlins awoke Thursday morning, their cast of regulars included just two hitters who weren't rating as above-average players in the eyes of adjusted OPS, where an even 100 denotes league average. Look toward the bottom here, and you'll see one was Adeiny Hechavarria and the other was you-know-who:
It's impressive that Stanton was rating as a league-average hitter despite all his struggles with consistency. Behold, the powerful effect that lots of power can have.
It's even more impressive, however, that the Marlins pushed their record above .500 despite the fact the guy who should be their best hitter has been one of their worst. If they could get that far basically without him, the prospect of how far they might get with him is obviously enticing.
Because Stanton's awakening has taken place over such a small sample size, there's a limit to how much it can be trusted. Indeed, we've already had a similar discussion about Stanton this year. He fell into a slump soon after, which now feels strangely like a warning.
But after all the Marlins have been through with Stanton this year, even subtle signs of progress are welcome. And in the last week or so, his signs haven't been subtle.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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