Return of The Mighty Giancarlo Stanton

Beneath this cynical, empirically motivated exterior, I’m actually a big softie. As such, I love it when an old guy turns back the clock and rediscovers the magic one last time. Almost a decade ago, Giancarlo Stanton was the proto-Aaron Judge: A player who was bigger and stronger than any outfielder we’d ever seen, and capable of hitting the ball much harder than anyone else in the league.

Stanton came of age just as Statcast made exit velocity public knowledge, though his 2017 season — the peak of his stardom — was impressive enough by the metrics Henry Chadwick scrawled on a cave wall 15,000 years ago. Those numbers: 59 home runs, 123 runs scored, 132 RBI, a .631 slugging percentage. Small wonder Stanton was named the MVP of the National League that year.

And we all know what came next. The trade to New York — or rather, given the Marlins’ proclivities at the time, the trade of Stanton’s record-setting contract to New York. The Yankees are no stranger to powerful duos in the middle of the lineup, but the Stanton-Judge Neo-Bash Brothers act never got a full hearing. Judge was hampered by injury in 2018, and Stanton played just 41 games in 2019 and 2020 combined thanks to injuries to his biceps, shoulder, knee, quadriceps, and hamstring.

By the time he played his next full season in 2021, Stanton was 31 years old and starting to break down. He was a good player that year — 35 homers, a 138 wRC+, 3.0 WAR — but not the franchise icon he had been in Miami. In the three seasons since, it’s been more of the same. Age progresses, that gigantic body slows down, and nagging injuries chip away at him like eroding desert sands on the Great Sphinx.

What is Stanton now? Well, for the past three seasons he’s been good for an average of 27 home runs in 108 games a year. He’s as discriminating a swinger as Joey Votto, and he’s always carried a strikeout rate commensurate with his raw power. But now, that walk rate is into the single digits and the strikeout rate is up over 30%. This season, Stanton’s sprint speed was in the third percentile, and if he didn’t own a mitt we’d never know because he hasn’t played an inning in the outfield since September 2023.

Stanton is all bat, and nothing but the bat at this point in his career. Not wishing to be unkind, the results leave a lot to be desired. Over the past three seasons, Stanton has hit .212/.291/.454, which is a wRC+ of 106. That’s hardly late-career Albert Pujols territory, but also: These Yankees are not those Angels. They’d want more from a full-time DH making $32 million this year.

But even now, there is one thing Stanton can do. A month before he turns 35, with almost 7,000 major league plate appearances behind him and an injury history that sounds like the lyrics to “Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes,” Stanton can still swing a baseball bat harder than any man alive.

According to Baseball Savant’s bat tracking leaderboard, Stanton’s average bat speed on competitive swings this year was 81.2 miles per hour. That’s not only the highest mark in baseball, it’s the highest by a huge margin. The gap between Stanton and second-place Oneil Cruz is greater than the gap between Cruz and 11th-ranked Christopher Morel.

The impact, so to speak, of that skill is enormous.

Stanton won ALCS MVP on the strength of only four base hits in the entire series. But all four of them were home runs. Across nine postseason games, Stanton has 10 hits: five home runs, two doubles, and three singles. That’s good enough for a batting average of .294 — good by almost anyone’s standards, but not in and of itself noteworthy. Brayan Rocchio hit .333 this postseason, for instance, and everyone will have forgotten all about it by Thanksgiving.

What makes Stanton special — what’s always made him special — is his ability to get the most out of his contact. Of Stanton’s 10 base hits, the softest came off the bat at 96.4 mph. Six of his hits had exit velocities in the 110s. No other team, including the non-Stanton Yankees, has more base hits with exit velocities that high this postseason. Among hitters with at least 20 balls in play this postseason, Stanton is second in slugging percentage on contact, first in xSLG, and second in xwOBACON.

And while traditionalists might not love Stanton’s three-true-outcomes style, nobody can accuse him of not being a timely hitter this postseason. Stanton drove in at least one run with eight of those 10 total hits. Four of those RBI hits broke a tie; a fifth brought the Yankees level in a game they’d trailed since the second inning. Is that a repeatable skill? Not really. But you win ALCS MVP by making your hits count.

Baseball fans tend to have a great appreciation for history and a proclivity for schmaltz and nostalgia. But the sport itself is merciless and unsentimental. One day, you’re one of the best hitters in baseball, on track to hit 600 or even 700 home runs before all is said and done. The next, you’re an afterthought.

But sometimes, players like Stanton get a reprieve. Actually, many great hitters do. Ted Williams had one last run at .400 at age 38. Pujols got his farewell tour. Votto reinvented himself for a 36-homer campaign at age 37, after he’d looked cooked for years before. Is Stanton doing the same now?

Or is this merely a reminder of what has always been? The game has changed profoundly over the past 15 years, and so has Stanton himself. It’s easy to forget that — when you set aside the contract, and the injuries, and the series of previous disappointments, and being eclipsed entirely by Judge and Soto — this man was born to hit the stuffing out of a baseball. He’s always been able to do that. And as long as pitchers keep hanging sliders and leaving fastballs up in the zone, he always will.