MIAMI — Kyle Stowers crushed two home runs and drove in four runs as the Miami Marlins tied a season high with five homers in a 10-5 rout of the Athletics, snapping a two-game skid to open July.
Stowers’ 10th home run of the season, a two-run shot in the eighth inning, cemented his third multihomer performance of 2026 and capped a dominant stretch in which the first baseman is hitting .345 with five doubles, two triples, five homers and 15 RBIs over his last 15 games.
“I feel good,” Stowers said. “I feel like I have a chance to put together a good game every day right now.”
The Marlins wasted no time, scoring five runs before recording an out in the first inning — only the third Major League club to accomplish that this season, matching Toronto and Colorado. The first three hitters singled to load the bases for Xavier Edwards, who walked in a run. After a run-scoring passed ball, Kyle Hernández launched a three-run homer off righty Jack Perkins to blow the game open at 7-0. It was Hernández’s ninth homer of the season, fourth on the team.
“Certainly having a middle-of-the-order presence like Kyle that the other team has to prepare for and plan for, and his ability to walk, but also to drive in runs, hit home runs, slug, it’s a big boost,” manager Clayton McCullough said. “And then you’re also getting so many contributions from others within our lineup now, and starting to see more days like this, like we’re having, where we’re able to put up some crooked numbers in innings, and we’re able to extend leads. Kyle’s usually in the middle of a lot of good things that we’re doing on big offensive days.”
After the Athletics trimmed the lead to 7-5, Stowers answered with a leadoff homer in the sixth off righty Justin Sterner — a blast with a 45-degree launch angle, the highest on an over-the-fence homer by a Marlin since Jazz Chisholm Jr. on April 12, 2022. Rookie Owen Caissie added a two-run opposite-field homer in the ninth off righty Mason Barnett to cap the scoring.
“It’s very exciting to see the way he’s performing,” Hernández said of Stowers via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “We know what he can do. We saw that last year. We think he’s the guy. When he’s swinging the bat that way, the energy is something that is very contagious. It really helps the whole team.”
Miami, which entered with the sixth-fewest homers in the Majors, improved to 17-4 when hitting two or more long balls. The double-digit output marked the third time in five games the Marlins reached that threshold, following a historic 20-6 June. Stowers, a 2025 NL Gold Glove finalist in left field, was removed as a precaution due to light cramping in his quad.
“As long as we’re winning, that’s the No. 1 priority,” Stowers said. “I always want to play well, and I take a lot of pride in the way I prepare, and hold myself to a high standard. But this team’s really good, and we’ve had amazing performances all year from so many guys. I’m really curious to see what happens with how things shape up with the All-Star Game, but I know that Liam Hicks, Otto Lopez, Xavier, Max Meyer, Anthony Bender — there’s so many guys that are just so, so deserving. I like to be a contributor, but I think we’ve got a lot of good players.”