LOS ANGELES — This October, Giancarlo Stanton has reminded us of his bonafides as one of his generation’s most prolific postseason performers, but in recent years, much of the discourse surrounding the gargantuan slugger has been about his deficiencies more than his strengths.
At last year’s general manager meetings, Yankees GM Brian Cashman raised some eyebrows with his comments about what to expect from the former MVP moving forward.
“We try to limit the time he’s down, but I’m not gonna tell you he’s gonna play every game next year because he’s not,” Cashman said. “He’s going to wind up getting hurt again, more likely than not, because it seems to be part of his game.”
It was an unusual display of honesty from a GM about a player — one that was met with considerable and understandable blowback — but in simple terms, Cashman was right. Hamstring, knee, quad, groin, calf, Achilles; Stanton has been on the injured list due to ailments in practically every part of his lower half over the course of his 15-year career. In turn, his mobility has drastically diminished, ending his days as an outfielder and severely limiting his speed on the basepaths. On the whole, Stanton’s production and availability over the course of a 162-game regular season are undeniably no longer what they once were.
But even as injuries induced a slow decline from his days as an every-day outfielder vying for MVP awards to his current role as a designated hitter who misses about 50 games a year, Stanton’s quintessential skill has sustained: the ability to impact a baseball with more force than perhaps any player the game has ever seen.
“It’s massive bat speed,” Yankees assistant hitting coach Casey Dykes said. “It’s the best in the world. That’s where the power comes from.”
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In addition to the batted ball data it has tracked since 2015 — data that has validated Stanton’s status as unrivaled when it comes to exit velocity — Statcast introduced bat tracking in 2024, offering another look at the physical properties of each hitter’s swing in the form of bat speed. Sure enough, Stanton’s bat speed, even at age 34, exists in a tier of its own, with an average of 81.2 mph. It’s not difficult to imagine this having been the case during his prime in Miami, but the fact that Stanton has managed to keep this special trait intact over the years is no small feat.
“You see a lot of guys who are crazy-athletic early in their career and have a ton of bat speed, and that kind of goes down at the end of their career,” Dykes said. “For him, he’s been able to maintain what he’s got: being the best in the world at it. It speaks on how diligent he is to his training and how he takes care of himself.”
Stanton’s batting stance has also evolved over the course of his career as he intermittently reevaluates his ideal position in the batter’s box to allow him to continue swinging the bat with such ferocity. “It’s been the full spectrum of pretty open to really closed, now to a little tapered,” Stanton said of how he has tweaked his stance by altering the angle and direction of his feet in relation to the pitcher. “I’m always in the lab searching, trying to find the way I could be the most successful over a long period of time, and that’s changed and evolved over the years. And, you know, I lost some hair and added some grays because of it … but yeah, that’s part of it, and that’s where we’re at.”
While his secondary skills have largely evaporated, Stanton’s commitment to doing whatever necessary to retain his superior strength and his ability to access it have enabled him to not only remain relevant into his mid-30s but also reemerge as a main character amidst New York’s run to its first World Series in 15 years. His already stellar postseason résumé has been bolstered further this month by his epic showing in the ALCS vs. Cleveland, in which he hit four home runs in five games, earning ALCS MVP honors. It’s the latest chapter in a tremendous career that has in many ways been defined by the long ball.
Stanton, as a matter of fact, has been synonymous with home runs for as long as he has been swinging a bat — something you can’t say about even his closest peers in the power department. Consider Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, two of the select few players on the planet capable of impacting a baseball similarly to Stanton. We recognize this duo now as the standard-bearers of annual dinger production — no two players have amassed more long balls over the past four seasons than Judge (196) and Ohtani (178) — but it took time for each to translate his physical gifts into significant home run totals.
Ohtani’s thunderous raw power was on display on occasion early in his career, but he didn’t hit more than 22 home runs in a single year, in Japan or in MLB, until 2021, his ninth professional season. Judge, like Stanton, was a multi-sport star in high school who possessed an unusual combination of size and athleticism, but his supreme strength didn’t yield gaudy stats until he mastered his swing mechanics at the major-league level. Judge hit just 18 home runs in 169 collegiate contests at Fresno State and never hit more than 20 in a minor-league season.
For Stanton, there was no delay. In his first full professional season in 2008, he led the Low-A South Atlantic League with 39 home runs as one of the league’s youngest players. Still a teenager for the entirety of his second pro campaign, Stanton’s slugging prowess propelled him to Double-A, where he continued to hit tape-measure shots that witnesses still reminisce about. He made his MLB debut at age 20 in June 2010 and, shortly thereafter, smashed a grand slam for his first career homer.
Since then, 428 more regular-season home runs have followed, vaulting Stanton to 51st on the all-time list. With the retirements of Miguel Cabrera and Nelson Cruz last year, Stanton now holds the title of home run king among active MLB players. Although his pace has lessened in recent years due to injuries, he remains on a plausible path to becoming the 29th member of the 500-home-run club.
Of course, chasing those milestones isn’t a concern for Stanton at the moment. He is squarely focused on the task at hand, which is helping the Yankees secure the 28th championship in franchise history. And with each successive ultra-clutch swing, it’s become increasingly apparent that Stanton’s latest October hot streak is the product of not only his prodigious power but also his meticulous preparation. Manager Aaron Boone spoke during the ALCS about how Stanton benefits especially from seeing pitchers multiple times and lauded all the work Stanton does behind the scenes to put himself in position to succeed. “His preparation and his ability to just lock in and focus is impressive,” Boone said.
“You gotta study pitchers all the time. Doesn’t matter what point of the year. You have to do your own homework and create your plan of how you think they’re going to approach you and take information here and there,” Stanton said Thursday. “But at the end of the day, you know your thought process as a hitter best. So it’s best to get your own idea on how you’re going to be approached.”
Beyond the study sessions of opposing arms, Stanton also finds immense value in learning the environments in which he’ll be hitting. Prior to Games 3-5 of the ALCS in Cleveland, Stanton and Judge were out on the field long before either team’s standard batting practice sessions, taking swings off the machine at a variety of speeds and angles.
“Downloading the backdrop, downloading the depth perception,” Stanton said after the Yankees won the AL pennant in Game 5. “It’s very important to be ready to go in the first inning and not have to see a few pitches to get my timing and download down because that could determine the game right there in the first.”
The two sluggers were also the only Yankees to take live batting practice on Thursday during New York’s workout at Dodger Stadium ahead of World Series Game 1.
“I understand how important each pitch, each moment is,” Stanton said of competing at this time of year and the work that goes into feeling ready to do so. “I just try to get any bit of information I can, any bit of film, all the swings I need. I exhaust it. That’s why I’m exhausted after these [games] — and I enjoy that. I enjoy that grind. I need to. You’re not always going to go out there and perform well, but as long as I have all the information I can, I’ll be in a good spot.”
While he’s far from the only Yankee making his first World Series appearance, Stanton’s wait to get to this point was especially lengthy: Among active players, only Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado have played more games without reaching the World Series than Stanton had before now. That the Dodgers are the opponent serves as an especially compelling backdrop for Stanton’s first Fall Classic. This isn’t just the team he grew up rooting for. It’s also the team that passed on drafting him after he was a high school star in nearby Sherman Oaks and the team that was reportedly his preferred landing spot when it became clear back in 2017 that the Marlins were going to trade him.
Stanton has said that Dodger Stadium is his favorite ballpark to play in, and it’s also the venue that has hosted two of his most memorable moments as a big leaguer: his home run in 2015 that completely cleared the left-field pavilion and the 2022 All-Star Game, in which he homered and earned MVP honors.
Now, after another two rounds of postseason excellence from Stanton helped the Yankees get to this point, the stage is set for him to further cement his October legacy, beginning Friday in Los Angeles.
