Source: FanGraphs
Attendance: 20,562
Hero of the Game:Giancarlo Stanton (0.159 WPA)
Goat of the Game:Brad Hand (-0.326 WPA)
Play of the Game:Lucas Duda homered in the sixth inning. Eric Young and Andrew Brown scored. (-0.477 WPA)
The Miami Marlins got ahead early and Brad Hand seemed to be holding off the New York Mets through the first five innings of the game. The Fish got off to an explosive start when Giancarlo Stanton delivered his 21st home run of the season, a shot to deep left field that put the team up 1-0. Andrew Brown answered at the bottom of the frame for the Mets by homering off of Hand into the second deck, but a few innings later the Fish got that run back to take a 2-1 lead.
It would have been enough were it not for a difficult sixth inning for Hand. Eric Young led the inning off with a double, but Hand was able to get two outs, including one of his four strikeouts on the night. Brown again caused problems by forcing a walk, and that led to, of all people, Lucas Duda to save the Mets. The lefty took a 2-2 pitch from Hand that hung up and in at breaking ball speeds and turned on it for a home run. Given that Duda is an honorary Marlins MVP with his poor play in the outfield, it figures that he would hurt the Fish on a night in which he was playing first base.
Stanton did not let that go easily, as he actually homered again off of Niese. This one was a line drive off of a good curve by Niese that was low, but Stanton dug it out and drove it into the Party City deck to cut the lead to 4-3. Unfortunately for Miami, that's where it stayed, as the Mets fulfilled my prediction of a 4-3 Fish loss.