Dee Gordon’s Return Sparks Biggest Marlins Win This Year

Doesn’t feel like there’s nearly enough coverage on this one, right?

This game was huge.  Huge.  PLAYOFF LEVEL INTENSITY HUGE.  Deserving of a fourth level of expression through playing with font settings huge.  Yea, it was big.

It felt like a playoff game, really did, from start to finish.  The stakes of this one, well they were the highest stakes for a Marlins regular season game in a long time. Nothing comes to mind really, though I’m sure something depressing happened against the 2009 or 2010 Phillies around this same time of year.

The winner got to claim tie-breaking privileges in a neck and neck race for the NL Wild Card, and the winner was the Miami Marlins in a 5-4 walk off victory Sunday afternoon at Marlins Park.

And we owe it all to the return of Dee Gordon.

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I know what you’re thinking. Mixing up my second basemen.  What I meant to type was “we owe it all to Derek Dietrich.”  He’s the one that hit that walk-off triple nearly as epic as the celebration that followed it.

To be fair, I originally wanted to call this piece Double D and the Incredibly True Story of the Greatest Series Split In Marlins History.

It looked a tad long though, and wouldn’t fit in the title box.  Plus, I absolutely meant it when I said Dee Gordon.

For Sunday’s win showed off the full impact of what Gordon’s return means.  If Dee was still out, that might have been Jeff Mathis standing at the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.  While Mathis has been playing better of late, I think we can all agree that he wouldn’t have been the optimum choice in that situation.

Dietrich came through and then some in the season’s first half, blossoming into a capable everyday player in Gordon’s absence.  You can find a lot of numbers to back the case that he’s better than Gordon, at least offensively, although that might change in a hurry if this absurd stretch of taking walks continues for Dee.  Three walks in two games? Took him twenty-one games to reach that mark in his truncated first half.

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But I digress.  Again, Dietrich played like a starter for half the year.  Next year, the Marlins might ask him to do it 162 times.  For 2016 though, least for this stretch run that Dee is eligible for, he’s best suited for the bench.  And for the role he filled today.

Spark plug. Power bat off the bench.  We don’t have one of those you know, not unless Don Mattingly gets around to trying to sneak Barry Bonds out there one of these days. Dietrich can offer that extra punch now, and his versatility stretches out a weak Marlins bench.

Weak excluding Ichiro.  Down people, I’m in love with the man too.

As for the playoffs, if we get that far?  Hopefully a bat shakes loose on waivers later this month.  But until then, thank Dee for giving us a much needed weapon.

Just look at the picture.  Would you want to mess with that?