New York Yankees Analysis: Giancarlo Stanton to be comeback Yankee of the Year

New York Yankees, Giancarlo Santon

The New York Yankees have so many good players it’s hard to find a comeback player in this shortened 2020 baseball season.  But I have found one in Giancarlo Stanton.  I write this article in response to a fellow writer that laughed about the notion that Giancarlo Stanton could return to near 2017 MVP performance in my Yankee Top 10 prediction article.

In that article, I predicted Giancarlo Stanton would have a relatively healthy season with the Yankees. He will show signs of the type of player that got him the MVP Award, with the Marlins in 2017. Although he will not top the team in home runs, he will have fewer strikeouts and will be more productive. If he stays healthy, he could be second in home runs.

If I wanted to go out on a limb, I would say if healthy, he has the potential to lead the team in home runs and batting average.  Although that is unlikely, if everything goes right for him, he could be the comeback player of the year.

Many New York Yankee fans have been disappointed in how he has performed in pinstripes, maybe unrealistically so.  If you expected him to repeat his 2017 MVP performance with the Miami Marlins, you were asking too much.  Very few MLB players have repeated the MVP status year after year.

In 2018 for the New York Yankees, you must remember that he hit 38 home runs and drove in 100 runs. That certainly was nothing to snub your nose at.  Because of a variety of injuries, many fans called him the glass man in 2019.  But in only 18 games, he improved his 2018 batting average to third on the team. He was third in OPS. He also hit a home run in every six games. If he had played in a similar number of games as other star players, he would have had numbers like Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez.  Another stat to consider is that led MLB in maximum exit velocity in 2016, 2017, and 2018.

This season if he can avoid a long slump, something he has been known to have, a season without fans in the stands, may help that substantially, as he won’t have to listen to boos from fans, that seemed to bother him greatly last year.  The key to Stanton’s season will be for him to stay healthy. In 2018 when he hit 38 home runs, he played in all but four games.  To assume that he will again be constantly injured is to be pessimistic, and is without founding.

The future Yankee Giancarlo was a dominant player in just about every youth league sport he tried, including football. He continued playing sports after enrolling at Verdugo Hills High in Tujunga, Florida, in 2003. He pitched and played the outfield for the varsity baseball squad. In 2005, as a sophomore, he hit a game-winning homer for the Dons in the quarterfinals of the city playoffs. Unfortunately, Giancarlo’s grades were not measuring up to his stats. His parents, in the process of a divorce, switched him to a private school, Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, about 30 minutes away.

Almost immediately, Giancarlo began coming into his own, both on and off the field. As he approached his final height of 6’6″ and packed on more muscle, few doubted he would make a living in sports. The only question was, which sport? He had accepted a scholarship to play baseball for Tulane and received offers from UCLA, UNLV, and USC to play football.

In 2007 when selected by the Miami Marlins in the second round of the draft, he was happy to receive a half-million signing bonus. In 2008, Giancarlo spent the entire season with the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the Class-A South Atlantic League. Playing for manager Edwin Rodriguez, he was just 18 when the season started, but he torched enemy pitchers for 39 homers in 125 games. Giancarlo followed up his first campaign in pro ball with an awesome 2009 season, as he moved steadily up the organizational ladder. He spent 50 games with the Jupiter Hammerheads and hit .291 with 12 homers.

Giancarlo started the 2010 season back in Jacksonville. That May, in a game against the Montgomery Biscuits, he hit a ball that cleared the scoreboard in left-centerfield later to be found to have gone 500′ from home plate.. A month later, Giancarlo had surpassed 20 homers in just over 50 games. He got the call from the big club and was in the lineup at age 20 on June 8 against the Philadelphia Phillies with a $325 million contract.

In Stanton’s first major league game, he went 3 for 5 with two RBI’s. He continued to have success after success and award after award: two Silver Sluggers, two Hank Aarons, two home run Leaders, four All-stars, until he reached the MVP of the National League in 2017. Then as the Marlins dumped salary, he was traded to the New York Yankees after a 59 home run season.

Short memories forget that he nearly carried the Yankee team in 2018 when the Yankees won 100 games.  He also fielded the outfield with near Gold Glove accuracy with a .992 fielding percentage, which was better than his MVP year with the Marlins. If you want to be negative, you can assume Stanton will be constantly injured and will not help the team.  If you choose to be positive, you might see the 30-year-old entering his prime and being the comeback kid in this coronavirus season.

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