TAMPA, Fla. — It’s rare for a general manager in professional sports to be as brutally honest about a player as Brian Cashman was back in November. During an hour-long media session, Cashman called Giancarlo Stanton injury-prone and said getting hurt “seems to be part of his game.”
Cashman’s comments led to Stanton’s agent, Joel Wolfe, releasing a statement to The Athletic about how people who play in New York need to be made of Teflon, both mentally and physically. For the first time since Cashman called Stanton out, the slugger spoke with the media but kept the content of his conversation with his GM private.
“He knows my reaction to that,” Stanton said Monday in front of his locker at the Yankees’ spring training complex.
Stanton added that he is OK with Cashman but did not offer up much else about how the comments affected his offseason and if he used them as motivation. However, Stanton showed up to Tampa as a leaner version of himself. There’s never been a question about whether or not Stanton was in top shape — he’s practically made of stone — but both he and the team felt it was important for him to be lighter because most of his injuries over the past few years have been lower-body, soft-tissue related.
Stanton said most of his offseason work centered around becoming more mobile; the setbacks he has faced over the past few seasons haven’t allowed him to move the way he wants. In 2017, Stanton ranked in the 70th percentile in sprint speed. In 2023, Stanton ranked in the fourth percentile.
The Yankees’ designated hitter became a liability for the team last season in every facet of the game. His 89 wRC+ ranked him 11 percent worse than the average major-league hitter. He couldn’t run the bases. And because of his lack of mobility, putting him in the outfield was a non-starter. He hopes the changes he made this offseason round out his game.
“Be a baseball player again,” Stanton said.
Because of poor depth last season, manager Aaron Boone didn’t have better options other than to hope Stanton would figure it out at the plate and return to being one of the most feared hitters in the sport. But since mid-July of 2022, Stanton has posted an 84 wRC+ in 549 plate appearances.
The Yankees have better depth this season, with Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Alex Verdugo the projected Opening Day starting outfield. Boone has mentioned how he plans on giving Judge more time at DH to get him off his feet on the days he’s not playing center field. Trent Grisham, the team’s fourth outfielder, is one of the best defenders in the league and likely will play center field when Judge is the DH. The narrative around Stanton for several years running is how he believes playing the outfield helps him at the plate. But more than ever, he’ll have to prove he’s deserving of being in the field.
“My expectation, and Giancarlo and I communicated at the end of last year, is making sure that outfield is an option,” Boone said last week. “We’ll see if that leads to if he’s out there once or twice a week or if he’s not depending on how healthy across the board we are, we’ll just let that play out. I do feel like he’s in a position to do that and we’ll prepare like that in the spring.”
Becoming more mobile isn’t the only change that Stanton is expected to debut in spring training. The 34-year-old said there will be swing changes, too, though he declined to get into them. It will be interesting to see if Stanton’s dramatic closed-off stance becomes a bit more open because it likely doesn’t make it easy to pull the ball in the air, and that’s when he’s the most dangerous at the plate. Of the 43 at-bats Stanton had this past season that led to a pulled fly ball or line drive, 13 ended in a home run.
Even with Soto’s arrival, there’s still intense pressure on Stanton to rebound because the Yankees owe him $98 million over the next four years. He has a no-trade clause and even if he didn’t, his injury history and contract would make him a tough sell to other clubs. Stanton said this winter was the “first whole healthy offseason in a long time.” He mentioned how he didn’t go on any international trips like he usually does because he’s trying to put the past year and a half behind him. After Monday, Stanton said he won’t be talking much about 2023 anymore. He wants to prove he can still be a valuable member of the Yankees.
“I don’t get paid to be a standup guy, say the right things,” Stanton said. “I’m here to produce and help us win a championship and that hasn’t happened. It needs to be done. I don’t listen to noise. I understand the facts.”
(Top photo of Giancarlo Stanton: Ed Zurga / Getty Images)
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