Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton again shows his value with monster postseason
Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton (27) hits a 3 run homer in the sixth inning during Game 4 of the ALCS against the Guardians at Progressive Field in Cleveland on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
CLEVELAND
No more making fun of how slowly he runs.
No more rolling your eyes when he takes a wild swing at a low-and-away slider.
No more shaking your head when he ends up on the injured list with yet another leg injury.
Giancarlo Stanton deserves your respect for what he has done as a Yankee when it counts most — in the postseason.
It someday might earn him a spot in the Hall of Fame. One thing is certain: Entering Saturday night’s Game 5, one more victory in the ALCS will put Stanton and the Yankees in the World Series.
“It feels like nothing until we get it done,” he said after his three-run home run on Friday night helped the Yankees beat the Guardians, 8-6, to take a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. “As far as I’m concerned, we haven’t done nothing. We’ll enjoy this for now, but we’ve got to get it done [Saturday] and on to the next.”
The next would be the World Series, which the Yankees haven’t seen except on TV since they won it all in 2009. Stanton has never been to the World Series, which makes sense because all of his postseason experience has been as a Yankee since he joined the club in 2018.
Going into Saturday, Stanton had hit 15 home runs and driven in 33 runs in 35 postseason games. In the 2024 playoffs, he was batting .300 with a 1.167 OPS, four home runs, nine RBIs, five walks (to only four strikeouts) and a rare stolen base.
Stanton has the most home runs per game of any player in MLB postseason history. The man he passed on Friday — Babe Ruth, you may have heard of him — had 15 home runs in 41 postseason games, all of them in the World Series.
Stanton, at age 34, burns to play in his first World Series, especially if it is against his hometown Los Angeles Dodgers (the Mets would be fine, too).
So does running mate Aaron Judge, who homered in Games 2 and 3 and went 1-for-4 with a walk in Game 4.
The Yankees aren’t being carried on Judge’s back. Even with his uptick, he still was batting only .185 in the playoffs going into Saturday.
Instead, they have turned for the biggest and loudest home runs to Stanton, whom Alex Verdugo calls “our second captain.”
Stanton is a quiet, forceful presence with a dry wit. He is a swing-first, talk-last slugger. But when he talks, the Yankees listen.
“It’s kind of like, ‘Oh, we know, yada, yada,’ ” Stanton said. “But you’ve got to have those discussions and talk everybody through it, whether you’ve been there before, whether you haven’t.”
There’s no doubting Stanton’s rare athletic gifts and his ability to punish a baseball, as he did when he hammered a 404-foot three-run shot in the sixth inning on Friday night to give the Yankees a 6-2 lead.
Of course, the gritty Guardians eventually tied it, but the Yankees scored two in the ninth and held on for dear life in the bottom half.
Anyone who said — or foolishly wrote — that the ALCS was “over” after the Yankees took the first two games at home was wrong, wrong, wrong. The Guardians have earned the respect of the Yankees by coming back to win Game 3 and nearly doing the same in Game 4.
“No lead is safe,” Stanton said. “It’s a great team over there, but it’s just important to keep pushing. That’s what shows that we need every single person on our team to contribute in some way, and we’re going to need everybody. They answered the bell. It’s a wave. It’s a roller coaster.”
Stanton’s Yankees tenure has been a roller coaster. His constant injuries made it seem as if the ride was going to end at the bottom. General manager Brian Cashman even made the ill-advised statement this past offseason that getting injured “seems to be part of his game.”
Stanton was not amused, but he already was working on a way to change the narrative. With the exception of one stint on the injured list in June and July with a hamstring strain, he succeeded.
Stanton is signed through 2027 with a team option for 2028. He has 429 regular-season home runs and should reach 500 if he stays healthy. Always the big if.
When Stanton’s name appears on the Hall of Fame ballot five years after he retires, voters will have to consider his total body of work, with extra credit for the prodigious postseason prowess.
Points will have to be taken away for his body’s total body of work, too, with all the breakdowns factored in.
But that’s a debate for another day. On Saturday, the Yankees were focused on one thing: Getting to the World Series.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.