MIAMI — Jacob deGrom and Jose Fernandez met Saturday night in a matchup expected to outshine almost any in the sport, the stakes raised with the outcome potentially swapping the Mets’ and Marlins’ spots in the standings.
DeGrom had been untouchable for most of the past month. Fernandez had been declared “almost unbeatable” at Marlins Park by Mets manager Terry Collins.
But Giancarlo Stanton was looming. The game’s biggest slugger always is ready to swipe the spotlight against the Mets, always prepared to screw up their plans.
Coming off the best regular season start of his career, deGrom had his worst outing of the season, allowing five runs and 10 hits — including three hits, three RBIs and one mammoth home run by Stanton — as the Mets lost 7-2 to the Marlins to fall 1 ½ games back of the NL’s second wild-card spot.
DeGrom (6-5), who most recently had pitched a one-hit, complete-game shutout, was removed Saturday after throwing just 3 ²/₃ innings, marking the second shortest outing of his career.
“I just think I wasn’t very good and pretty much everything I threw seemed to go down the middle and I paid for it,” deGrom said. “That’s on me. I just didn’t make pitches.”
With the Marlins trailing 2-1 in the bottom of the third, Stanton unleashed a show more spectacular than any duel the fans had in mind.
With a runner on, Stanton demolished a fastball high and deep to left, the ball crashing into the scoreboard after approximately 441 feet of travel, exiting his bat at 116 miles per hour. It was Stanton’s 21st home run of the season and first since winning the Home Run Derby. It also marked his third homer off deGrom this month.
Stanton, who had his first four-hit game of the season, has six home runs and 12 RBIs in 10 games against the Mets this season, bashing five homers in the past four meetings. In the slugger’s past two meetings with deGrom (the other was July 6), Stanton is 5-for-5 with five RBIs and a walk.
“I saw him hit a ball pretty far over the wall, [nothing more] I can say,” deGrom said. “I threw a couple balls down the middle and he hit them hard.”
In the fourth, Stanton came up with two outs and two on and knocked deGrom from the game with an opposite-field RBI single to give the Marlins a 4-2 lead.
“I left [deGrom] in to pitch to [Stanton]. If I wanted to walk him, I could’ve brought somebody else in to walk him,” Collins said. “[Stanton’s] a great player, [but] when we make pitches, we can get anybody out. You can put whatever name on it. I saw [Marlins hitting coach Barry] Bonds, I was with Barry for a long time, and I saw them get him out, too. You just got to make better pitches.”
Fernandez (12-4) also found the outing uncharacteristically challenging, but the 23-year-old still improved to 26-1 in his career at Marlins Park, and 3-0 against the Mets in his career, after allowing two runs and seven hits over seven innings, while striking out seven.
After a mesmerizing performance on June 5 at Citi Field, in which Fernandez struck out 14 in seven shutout innings, the right-hander was pushed to the ropes multiple times but almost always landed the most impactful blow.
In the first inning, the Mets put two runners on base but no runs on the board before briefly taking a 2-1 lead in the third on a Yoenis Cespedes bloop single and James Loney sacrifice fly.
With the Marlins up 3-2 in the fifth, Fernandez was in trouble again after giving up three singles to load the bases, but the ace escaped by getting Loney to fly out and striking out Asdrubal Cabrera.
“He’s real good. You have to take advantage of mistakes,” Collins said. “He fell behind in some counts, and we got some balls to hit, but you look up, and he was still out there in the seventh.”
By then, deGrom was long gone. There was no duel, only destruction.