The date is April 16th, and the venue is Yankee Stadium in New York City. The hometown Yankees are playing the Miami Marlins, who’ve started a sizzling 4-11 and are only expected to get worse from there, as they spent the offseason trading many of their best players for prospects. One of the players traded by the Marlins, Giancarlo Stanton, has found his new home in New York, where he wears number 27 in pinstripes.
Along with the trade to New York came heightened expectations, and Stanton’s volatile performance is no longer hidden from the national media. This pressure from Yankees fans has been apparent since the very beginning of the season, as they booed him loudly today--after just 14 games in pinstripes. In those 14 games, Stanton has struggled mightily, hitting just .220 and clocking in 25 strikeouts in 66 at-bats. Yankees fans have reacted harshly, vocalizing their displeasure during many of Stanton’s at-bats at Yankee Stadium, including one during the eighth inning of a 12-1 win against his former team. Needless to say, Stanton is not in Miami anymore.
Should Yankee fans be so disappointed after just 14 games of the 2018 season? There’s an argument to be made for both sides. On one hand, Stanton was the National League MVP last season, hitting 59 homers and driving in a league-leading 132 RBIs. On the other, why should the expectations for Stanton be so enormous? For the entire 2018 offseason, baseball fans listened as the media fed us a Giancarlo Stanton narrative that was grossly exaggerated. As I already mentioned, Stanton is coming from one of the smallest markets in the sport, which means his peak performances were recognized by hardly any media presence whatsoever. This also means that when he failed miserably, which he did a lot in Miami, there was no coverage of his struggles. People forget that Stanton once had a stretch with the Marlins in 2015 where he went 0-22 with 18 strikeouts. People forget that Stanton has only been an All-Star 4 times in his 8 major league seasons, and a couple of those can be chalked up to his reputation--a reputation that has been inflated by the market that he played in for the first eight years of his career. Here’s my point: Stanton is not as productive a player as you have been led to believe. He’s hit over 40 home runs just once in his career and driven in over a hundred runs just twice. He is not a baseball god. He should not be lumped in with Aaron Judge or Mike Trout because he simply isn’t as good.
The sooner Yankees fans figure that out, the faster they will come to terms with their overpaid and overrated superstar. Until then, we can only hope that Stanton becomes unhappy enough to galvanize the ownership and part the seas for a Boston Red Sox division crown (pretty far-fetched, I know).
(Stats via Baseball Reference)
留言