Yankees hope playing Giancarlo Stanton in field will benefit him at plate

Aaron Boone said last weekend in Boston the time might be right to put Giancarlo Stanton in the outfield, perhaps as soon as Tuesday night when the Yankees opened a three-game series against the Mariners.

But Stanton instead was at DH, then was on the bench Wednesday against tough righthander Luis Castillo.  

Finally, on Thursday, the Yankees decided it was time.

Stanton, who has been brutal at the plate since coming off the injured list, started in right and batted cleanup in the series finale against the Mariners.

“I don’t know. We’ll see,” Boone said before the game, one in which his team was down 10-0 in the fourth inning, of how many days a week he envisioned Stanton playing the field. “Hopefully, it remains in play throughout the year … Hopefully at least a couple (games) are at least in play.”

Stanton, like many of his teammates, has been in a horrible slump of late, it coinciding with Aaron Judge’s stint on the IL.

Stanton, who struck out his first time up Thursday,  entered 5-for-45 (.111) with two homers and a .482 OPS in 13 games since returning June 2 with a home run and two runs scored against the Dodgers. The skid lowered Stanton’s season batting average to .196 and his OPS to .680 in 26 games (he entered Thursday with six homers).  

“I just need to find my rhythm, pick the ball up a little sooner,” Stanton said Sunday in Boston. “The reps help, but at this time, I don’t have time to just take reps to get them under my belt. I need to [make] an impact when I’m in there, so I just need to figure it out.”

Stanton, and the Yankees, naturally, hope him seeing time in the outfield will help.

That narrative, the one suggesting Stanton’s offense might benefit from him playing both ways, doesn’t always sit well with Boone who, when asked about it over the years, generally takes some kind of veiled shot at the media.

He did it again on Thursday.

“If he goes out and bangs tonight, I know you guys are going to be writing, ‘Oh, he’s back in the field,’ ” Boone said. “I don’t think it’s that simple. I think if he DH’d every game the rest of the way he’s going to hit. Hopefully, you guys are writing that because he’s raking and playing the field tonight.”

He added: “I think there’s a little something to do it. Again, I feel like it helps him athletically, I feel like it helps him from an injury standpoint, probably slightly from an engagement standpoint, a little bit more in the game, playing two parts of the game … So I think it helps a little bit, probably not as much as some of the coincidental stuff.”

But it is not some kind of media-driven narrative.

Stanton, who caught Mike Ford’s liner in the Mariners’ four-run first that went for a sacrifice fly, himself has many times over the years said playing the field makes him feel like more of a complete player, with the 33-year-old as recently as Sunday saying it “will help the team be more dynamic, so it’ll be good.”

Back in the second half of 2021, the Yankees took the bubblewrap off the injury-prone Stanton and started him in leftfield July 30 in an interleague game in Miami. It was the first of 26 games he played the rest of that season in left or right. Stanton, who hit .273 with an .870 OPS in 139 total games in 2021, hit .343 with a 1.065 OPS in 10 games in left and .279 with a .968 OPS in 16 games in right.

“I enjoyed being out there,” Stanton, a regular in the Marlins’ outfield in his eight seasons there to start his career and considered a solid and at times very good fielder by scouts, said in early April of last season after a start in right. “That’s obviously what I’ve done my whole career. I think it was a good switch-up from just DHing. I think it was good to be more engaged in the game. You don’t realize how somewhat disconnected from the game you are when you’re just DHing. I think it was a good change.”