MLB Update

You have a contract worth $325 million. You play in a beautiful stadium. You’re hammering the baseball, with 30 home runs this season and nine in your last 11 games.

Happy? Not Giancarlo Stanton. The linchpin of the Miami Marlins, the fancy centerpiece around which their table should be set, looks around and sees wreckage.

The owner, Jeffrey Loria, is loathed and reviled throughout South Florida. He’s also trying to sell the team. The Marlins (42-51) are (obviously) nine games under .500, 1-5 since the All-Star break and 15 games back in the National League East, which sports only one winning team anyway. They’ve now lost two home games in a row to the Philadelphia Phillies, proud holders of baseball’s worst record (32-61). The Phillies are so bad they are 10 games behind the Marlins.

The Marlins trailed 2-0 when they came to bat in the first inning and Stanton, hitting in the No. 2 hole, blasted a home run to cut the lead to 2-1. The Marlins scored only two more runs; the Phillies picked up another eight.

Stanton couldn’t help but vent.

“If you can’t win a series against the worst team in the league there’s not much going for you, right there,” Stanton said following the Wednesday afternoon loss.
The home runs, the individual adulation, that’s not getting it done for Stanton.

“I’ve had enough personal stuff. If we don’t win, it’s not that fun,” he said.

With a sale still uncertain, the future is uncertain. For Stanton, drafted by the Marlins in 2007 and a part of the major league club (a term used advisedly) since 2010, the future is always uncertain – and somewhere in the future. The Marlins haven’t had a winning season with Stanton, have not finished higher than third in the division since 2009, haven’t been to the postseason since 2003.

That is Stanton’s certainty. And it’s no wonder he’s unhappy.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman