When Giancarlo Stanton arrived at Yankee Stadium he was everything. December 2017 he came over from the Marlins for Starlin Castro, José Devers and Jorge Guzmán. And while it didn’t cost the Yankees much in talent, they have paid heavily for his services.
They will continue to pay for Stanton for quite awhile. In total it was a 13 year , $325,000,000 contract with the Miami Marlins signed in 2014. The early years of the deal were affordable for Miami.
When it went from $14.5M a season to $25M it was more than the cheap Marlins could stomach. The Yankees end of the contract won’t be done until his age 38 season in 2028.
Stanton was coming off an MVP season with Miami. One of the best offensive seasons in recent memory. He led the majors with 59 homers and 132 RBI. Meanwhile his soon to be teammate Aaron Judge was crushing 52 homers in his first full season with the Yanks.
What a duo they were expected to make. The championships would flow back to the Bronx. But Stanton has had trouble staying healthy. After playing 158 games in his first Yankees go round he has managed to play more than 114 games only once in 7 years wearing pinstripes.
Soto new partner for Judge
While the Yankees have played in five post seasons since Stanton’s arrival, they haven’t won a world series since 2009 and that was their only one in a quarter century.
With his health deteriorating, the Yankees felt the need to find a new star to rely on and brought in Juan Soto after his brief stop in San Diego, to team with Judge at the top of the Yanks line up.
Make no mistake, when Stanton makes contact, the ball still jumps off his bat. He was 2nd overall in maximum exit velocity at 120 MPH and 4th overall in avg exit velo at 94.6. But his 114 games played limited him to 27 homers.
But there he was in game 3 of the American League division series. At the plate with the game tied at 2 in the 8th inning and the best of 5 tied at one. Stanton crushed a 3-1 slider from Royals lefty Kris Bubic into the left field seats, perhaps his biggest Yankee home run.
With one more win, Stanton’s Yankees would head to the American League championship series. That would leave the Bronx Bombers one step from a world series berth in the hopes of pushing their record to 28 titles and their first in fifteen years.
