Giancarlo Stanton blasts mammoth, 504-foot homer but Marlins lose 12-6 to Rockies

Ichiro Suzuki moved to within one hit of 3,000.

Giancarlo Stanton bashed a 504-foot home run, one of the longest in years.

But the Marlins were bombed by the Colorado Rockies 12-6 on Saturday night.

Ichiro snapped an 0-for-11 skid with a pinch-hit infield single in the eighth off Rockies reliever Jordan Lyles that left him one hit shy of 3,000 for his major-league career.

He came up again in the ninth with a chance to become the 30th player in major-league history to reach the milestone, but bounced out to the pitcher on a close play at first.

Oddly enough, Ichiro was pinch-hitting for Stanton, who dropped jaws earlier Saturday with a mighty shot that was impressive even by his standards.

It was the longest home run ever hit in the 21 years of baseball at Coors Field, according to Statcast. And it was the longest home run ever hit by the modern-day king of tape-measure bombs. It was longer than any of his 61 blasts in the Home Run Derby.

“I didn’t see it land,” Stanton said.

On “wow” factor alone, Stanton ruled the day.

But the Rockies won the game. By a lot.

Stanton didn’t deliver the knockout blow with his mammoth solo shot off Colorado’s Chad Bettis in the fifth inning. The Rockies did with a flurry of punches in a seven-run sixth that carried them to the victory.

Making his second start since arriving to the Marlins in a trade with the Padres, Andrew Cashner was knocked around in a brutal sixth during which he faced six batters and retired none.

The Rockies sent 13 batters to the plate in the most disastrous inning of the season for the Marlins in terms of runs allowed.

“You’ve got to stay away from the big innings here,” Cashner said. “That’s what they thrive on here. I did a good job most of the game, and things kind of just unraveled in the sixth.”

Stanton’s home run became a footnote.

But what a footnote it was.

With the score knotted at 2-2, Stanton belted the first pitch he saw from Bettis in the fifth — an 87-mph changeup — about two-thirds of the way up in the left-center-field bleachers.

MLB.com’s Statcast, which first began measuring distances, launch angles and exit velocities last season, calculated Stanton’s shot at 504 feet based on an exit velocity of 116 mph and launch angle of 18 degrees.

That broke the Coors Field record of 496 feet, which Mike Piazza set in 1997.

But ESPN Stats and Info came up with its own estimate of 495 feet on Stanton’s homer.

Though that figure fell one foot shy of Piazza’s mark, it still matched the record for the longest home run hit in all of the majors over the past eight seasons.

It gave the Marlins a 3-2 lead that didn’t last.

One inning later, the Rockies did some heavy hitting of their own at the expense of Cashner and reliever Mike Dunn. Cashner was looking strong from the second through the fifth, retiring 12 of 13 batters.

But he fell apart in the sixth, giving up three singles, a double, a triple and a walk to the six batters he faced. Dunn fared no better.

With the game out of hand, Ichiro was sent in to hit for Stanton in the eighth and bounced a soft grounder to third that was fielded by Gold Glove third baseman Nolan Arenado.

But Ichiro was too fast for the throw, and he beat it out for the 2,999th hit of his major-league career.

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 11:57 PM with the headline "Giancarlo Stanton blasts mammoth, 504-foot homer but Marlins lose 12-6 to Rockies."