Stat Wrap 5/6: Miami Marlins Power Past Phillies

943 feet worth of BOOM.  That’s…a lot for two batters, even if one of them happens to be Giancarlo Stanton.

But for seven innings Friday night, the man with the longest home run in the majors in 2016 wasn’t Stanton at all, but Christian Yelich.

Bookended by those two mammoth blasts, the top of the order provided just enough offense to take a surprisingly important first game of this NL East showdown Friday night at Marlins Park, beating Philadelphia 6-4.

The win puts the Marlins at four games over .500 and in sole possession of third place in the NL East.  More importantly, they’re just 2 1/2 games out of first, and would be in the playoffs if the season ended today.  Having won 11 of their last 12, this past week of playing with a non-losing record has been the club’s best sustained run of of success since June 2014.

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Starter Wei-Yin Chen‘s run of four straight quality starts came to an abrupt end, as the veteran lefty gave up 4 ER on 11 hits in just 5 innings of work.  Even if it was an offense as poorly regarded as Philadelphia’s, not losing too much sleep over that given his post-Opening Day track record.  So it was the bullpen to the rescue again, which answered the bell by allowing just a single hit across four shut-out innings.

And now we Stat Wrap:

• The two longest home runs in 2016 have been hit by Marlins.
• Christian Yelich has a two-game HR streak.
• That’s happened once before in his career, in May of 2014.
• Stanton is in a four way tie for third in the majors with 10 HRs.
• Marcell Ozuna has a six-game hitting streak.
• Kyle Barraclough hasn’t given up a run in 10.2 IP in 2016.
• A Marlins reliever hasn’t taken a loss since April 17th.
• David Phelps earned another save, lowering his ERA to 1.00.
• Last 11/12 run by the Fish? April 2009: Marlins went 11-1 to open the season.