'I believe in myself': Sánchez rouses Marlins with clutch HR

WASHINGTON -- Clutch is fun for Marlins center fielder Jesús Sánchez. And it doesn’t get more clutch than what Sánchez did Sunday at Nationals Park.

Down to their final strike and down a run in the ninth, the Marlins needed their second-year center fielder simply to extend the game to stay alive against Nationals closer Tanner Rainey. Instead, Sánchez played hero, his two-out, two-strike, go-ahead two-run home run propelling the club from the precipice of defeat to its 7-4 10-inning win over the Nationals.

“I believe in myself,” Sánchez said. “Sometimes you’re not successful, but I believe in myself. I’m going to try to continue doing things like this.”

The second he connected, Sánchez knew he got all of it. After working his way back from an 0-2 count, the 24-year-old unloaded on Rainey’s 2-2 heater down in the zone, turning it around and into a 104.7 mph rainbow set for the seats hanging over the Nationals’ bullpen in right field. He finished with two hands, the bat held high around his head. Then he looked left, glaring into his own dugout before executing an epic bat drop as he ambled up the first-base line.

“I was celebrating really hard because the whole game I was behind on the fastball. I was actually working to get ahead, so getting that success with that home run was something very exciting for me and for the rest of the team.”

Per Win Probability Added, an advanced metric that seeks to gauge the gravity of individual plays to the game’s outcome, the Marlins’ chances of winning Sunday’s game jumped from 3 percent before Sánchez’s homer to 81 percent after. The play’s 0.74 Win Probability Added tied for the 12th highest across MLB this season, out of more than 88,000 plate appearances.

“I'm just looking for the fastball,” Sánchez said. “I'm a batter that will die just waiting for the fastball. In that situation, even though he was throwing some sliders, I was waiting for the fastball.”

Said manager Don Mattingly: “That was huge. The game doesn’t move on without that.”

It was a jolt the Marlins needed on an afternoon they blew two late-inning leads and found themselves one strike away from defeat after their starter threw six hitless innings. Pablo López didn’t allow a hit until Josh Bell’s leadoff double in the seventh, but he lost his shutout bid one batter later, and the lead by the end of the frame. López ultimately allowed two runs across 6 1/3 erratic innings, on only three hits but with three walks and three hit batsmen.

It was more of a step in the right direction than a return to form for López, who was one of baseball’s best pitchers through April and May (1.83 ERA) but is looking to rebound from a disastrous June (5.34 ERA). After the Marlins hit four singles to produce three runs in the 10th, López called Sánchez’s ninth-inning heroics “unbelievable.”

“The biggest thing is coming out of the game as a winning team, and I think how everyone came together with individual performances to help it, it was just great,” López said. “Sánchez had a great at-bat before the home run, to get the count back to 2-2 and get that fastball. Just like pitchers are never trying to give in, hitters are also never trying to give in. They’re trying to seek out their pitch and not miss it and that’s what he did.”

The Marlins are making a habit of these dramatic, late-inning heroics. Their fourth straight win was also their second this week featuring a go-ahead homer with the team down to its final out, after Avisaíl Garcia accomplished the same feat June 30 in St. Louis. Their habit of taking care of the Nationals is also helping Miami hang around in the NL Wild Card race; they’ve now won 11 of 12 against Washington this season, and outhomered the Nats by a 15-to-4 margin in those meetings.

“As a pitching staff, we know we have the bats to make stuff happen,” López said. “So it makes you want to keep the score as tight as you can.”