MIAMI — The Miami Marlins spent the month of July as one of the hottest teams in Major League Baseball, and, evidently, their summer surge will continue on in August.
Miami completed its first sweep of the New York Yankees in the franchise’s 32-year history with a 7-3 win on Sunday afternoon at loanDepot Park, a victory that moved the Marlins (55-55) to .500 for the first time since April 15.
“We played a clean game across the board, which has been a big part of this recent run. We’ve just played a good brand of baseball,” manager Clayton McCullough said. “All facets today came and played very well. The guys in there are excited, they played another good game and earned that sweep today.”
The powerful bat of left fielder Kyle Stowers has been the lightning rod for the Marlins’ hot streak the past two months, and the swing that earned the 27-year-old his first All-Star bid in July was again on display versus the Yankees.
Stowers’ seventh-inning grand slam was crucial in the Marlins’ 10-inning, instant classic of a victory in the series opener on Friday night before he launched another homer into the right field bleachers as he went 2 for 4 on Sunday.
Acquired in a trade with Baltimore at the 2024 deadline, Stowers entered Sunday with the fifth-best batting average (.297) and on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.950) in the National League .
“What Kyle has been doing is not like a surprise,” McCullough said. “Kyle is a dangerous hitter than can cover a lot of locations and pitch types now. Kyle is having a really special season.”
The only one with a hotter bat than Stowers this past weekend was Marlins’ rookie center fielder Jakob Marsee, who made his major league debut on Friday and has recorded a double in all three games since being called up to the bigs. On Sunday, though, he went for multiple extra-base hits, knocking an RBI triple off the center-field wall in the seventh.
“Very impressive start. The at-bat quality has really stood out,” McCullough said of Marsee. “The number of pitches he’s seen, his control of the strike zone, the discipline, and he’s getting some really good swings as well, he’s really driving the ball.”
Miami’s victory on Sunday was also aided by another efficient outing by right-hander Edward Cabrera, who recovered from allowing a leadoff homer by pitching six innings of one-run ball. Cabrera’s seven strikeouts were the second-most he’s posted in a game this season, and he walked only one batter as he notched his third straight start allowing one earned run or fewer.
“I was not thinking too much about it. Just trying to follow up with my routine, my gameplan” Cabrera said through a translator about the leadoff homer. “I truly believe a home run early like that doesn’t define the game. So I was just trying to do my best today on the mound.”
Though they picked up their sixth consecutive series victory versus the Yankees and have been playing some of their best baseball of the season as of late, the Marlins still have plenty of ground to make up in the standings.
The Marlins sit squarely in third place in the NL East, seven games behind the second-place Philadelphia Phillies. Miami has two series left with both the Phillies and the division-leading New York Mets on the schedule but will host the Houston Astros for a three-game set starting Monday.
In the wild-card race, Miami was 5 1/2 games behind the Padres for the final playoff spot, with the Padres playing on Sunday night.
“It feels really good,” Cabrera said of the Marlins stretch of resurgence. “The hard work that we were putting together through the whole season, you can see the results right now and it’s amazing to have that constant result.”
