TAMPA, Fla. – When the Yankees traded for Giancarlo Stanton on a winter afternoon ahead of the 2018 season, it was easy for the slugger to say he would “feel sorry for the baseballs.”
Fresh off headlining a Home Run Derby showcase together in Miami, the move paired the National League’s reigning MVP with Aaron Judge, then the American League’s Rookie of the Year. The forecast seemed clear not only for bushels of homers, but championships.
As Stanton enters his ninth season in pinstripes, the duo have produced enough big swings to shatter Statcast, but no title. That objective continues to fuel Stanton, who said his time in New York would be “an incomplete story” without a ring.
“You’ve got to get over the hump,” Stanton said on Tuesday. “Obviously, the goal is the World Series. The goal is a championship, but you’ve got to do what’s in between – not to get there, but to complete it.”
But it didn’t work out that way. The Dodgers took the series in five games, and when the Yankees received their AL championship rings the next spring in a Manhattan ballroom, Stanton was the one who spoke up to tell his teammates they’d better not be seen wearing them in public.
“This isn’t the one we wanted,” Stanton told his teammates that night.
Now Stanton and the Yankees are looking to prove a largely similar group can topple the Blue Jays and the rest of a stacked AL East.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he thought Stanton looked leaner than last season, when he hit 24 homers in 77 games, posting a .273/.350/.594 slash line despite being limited by severe tennis elbow in both arms.
“He had a good winter,” Boone said. “He’s always in good shape, but he looks really good to me, really lean. He’s jumping into all the drills, ready to go right now. I feel like we’re in a good spot right now.”
Stanton didn’t challenge that, saying that he feels good moving around, but offered a reminder about the elbow discomfort that began bothering him during the second half of the ’24 season – including that epic ALCS against Cleveland.
It is manageable, he said, but will never heal completely. As long as Stanton keeps swinging a bat, there will be discomfort. Yet he says he can do what is necessary to stay on the field.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Stanton said. “It’s always going to be maintenance. But it didn’t hinder me from any work, and that’s the most important thing.”
Boone said he’ll probably wait about a week before plugging Stanton into Grapefruit League games. Most of Stanton’s playing time will again come as a designated hitter, though Boone didn’t rule out some outfield reps, just to keep the option in play.
“He’s evolved, how he trains, how he takes care of himself,” Boone said. “In a perfect way, he’s healthy the whole way. I’ll be proactive with giving him [rest] days, just to be able to keep him healthier long term.”
The objective is to fulfill what Stanton expected when he stood posing for photographs holding a pinstriped jersey in that Winter Meetings ballroom late in 2017, when the immediate future looked limitless.
As Stanton said, there will still be opportunities to deliver that parade through the Canyon of Heroes. But they have less time than they once did.
“The story is still being written,” Stanton said. “But the point of being a Yankee is being a champion. There’s always going to be a stain there without that.”
