Time for Giancarlo Stanton to carry these Yankees with Aaron Judge out
New York Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton against the Texas Rangers at Yankee Stadium last Friday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Any faint optimism that Aaron Judge soon might stride through the clubhouse door, ready to return to the Yankees’ lineup, dissipated on Saturday when he said he still feels pain while walking on his injured toe.
Not the best news for the Yankees. But the silver lining is that they have the next-best thing to Judge just a few lockers away in Giancarlo Stanton.
Stanton is the one Yankee with the stature and pedigree to make fans forget, for a while, the absence of the reigning AL MVP.
No offense to DJ LeMahieu or Anthony Rizzo or the rest of the other Yankees regulars, but Stanton needs to go on one of his ridiculous hot streaks and carry the Yankees until Judge can return from his toe woe.
When Stanton is right, he’s next to impossible to get out. When he’s wrong, the sight of him flailing repeatedly at sliders away makes you wonder if he’s ever going to get another hit.
But few hitters strike fear in opposing pitchers like the 6-6, 245-pound Stanton. Not just pitchers but infielders, third base coaches and third base umpires, too. Nobody wants to stand in front of a 115-mph line drive, and those are what Stanton hits regularly when he’s at his best. (His 118.3 maximum exit velocity is second in MLB to the 118.6 by Atlanta’s Matt Olson this year.)
He has not been at his best lately, though. Stanton snapped an 0-for-20 skid on Saturday with a ground single to left in his first at-bat and raised his arms as if to say “Hallelujah” after reaching first base. But he didn’t get another hit until his final at-bat on Sunday, when he whistled a 96-mph line drive to left for an RBI single in the eighth inning of the Yankees’ 5-3 comeback victory over the Rangers. He entered the inning with four hits in his previous 50 at-bats.
Stanton bookended the two singles around five other plate appearances in which he struck out three times, hit a fly ball to center and walked.
It’s why he wasn’t exactly jumping for joy in the Yankees’ otherwise happy clubhouse on Sunday after they took two of three from the AL West-leading Rangers before a road trip that begins Tuesday in Oakland against the 20-60 Athletics.
“I’ve got a lot to do,” Stanton said. “It’s good for now, but that [eighth-inning single] doesn’t clear it for me.”
Asked about stepping it up with Judge out, Stanton shrugged and said, “For me, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do regardless of who’s on the field, regardless of anything.”
This isn’t about money. Sure, Stanton’s salary for 2023 is $32 million, but opposing pitchers don’t see dollar signs when he steps into the box. They see someone who could crush a 450-foot home run at any time with a short, powerful swing. The bat looks like a toothpick in Stanton’s hands. When he connects, you know it’s gone.
Ask Stanton about the mechanics of that swing or what exactly he’s working on to fix it, and you get the idea he’d rather give you his cellphone number and offer to let you text him at all hours of the night.
“Be better, that’s what I’m working on,” he said.
Presumably, Stanton is working ’round the clock with the Yankees’ hitting coaches to get back to something like his 2017 NL MVP form, when he hit 59 home runs for the Miami Marlins. Judge and Stanton are the only active players to have hit as many as 59 in a season. Pete Alonso is next at 53.
An unofficial and heretofore unknown Yankees hitting coach — pitching ace Gerrit Cole — offered his own advice when talking about Stanton on Sunday.
“Big G, you know, tough strikeout [in the sixth] before he gets the RBI base hit,” Cole said. “But he just gets hitterish in that last at-bat, takes a pretty good pitch, slider that’s splitting the bottom of the zone, and he’s able to stay under control. The ball comes off his bat so hard, often a lot of times he’s just got to stay kind of reactionary and trust his hands a bit. When you’re fighting through all this kind of stuff that these guys are, sometimes just that trust can be the hardest thing.”
It’s hard for Yankees fans to trust Stanton because he gets hurt so often (he’s played in 30 of the team’s 78 games) and looks so helpless when he’s struggling. He’s healthy now (knock on wood).
Like Judge, Stanton has enormous, broad shoulders. It’s time for him to tell the Yankees to hop on and enjoy the ride.
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.
