Is Giancarlo Stanton BACK Back?

To place it delicately, Giancarlo Stanton’s stint with the New York Yankees hasn’t precisely gone in keeping with plan. To place it much less so, Stanton has amassed fewer WAR in eight years in New York than Aaron Decide did in 2024 alone. When the Yankees acquired Stanton in late 2017, the expectation was that he’d be the inspiration of the crew’s lineup for the following decade as he completed assembling his Corridor of Fame case. Nonetheless, since a strong if mildly underwhelming debut season within the Bronx, Stanton has suffered by way of a parade of accidents that has left him with solely a single 120-game season, and his deity-level exit velocities have quickly grow to be his principal offensive talent. 5 hundred house runs, which as soon as would have appeared like a disappointing ultimate milestone for Stanton, more and more appeared preferred the joyful consequence.

Stanton’s well being has remained an issue, as he missed a big chunk of this season with a extreme case of tennis elbow in each elbows. However the outcomes he’s gotten when he has been accessible have been of traditional Marlins classic: a .313/.388/.663 line with 17 house runs and 1.9 WAR in 51 video games, with the WAR complete his finest tally since 2021. With Decide first out with a flexor pressure after which lacking his ordinary energy since his return, having Stanton bust out to this diploma has stored the Yankees’ present spate of issues from turning into even higher.

So, how has he achieved it? Quite than revolutionize his sport, Stanton is taking part in like essentially the most Stantonified model of himself. His common exit velocity and hard-hit share are at their highest ranges ever, and his out-of-zone swing share is the bottom it has been in years. The assault angle on his swing has ticked up a few levels, sufficient to present him a perfect assault angle 65% of the time, up from 60% in 2024 and 57% in 2023. We don’t have bat monitoring information additional again, however we do know that Stanton has a career-high price of flyballs and a career-low price of grounders.

Groundballs aren’t essentially the worst factor on this planet, though as of late Stanton runs at about the identical velocity that George RR Martin finishes writing novels. Over the Statcast period, Stanton has a .271 BABIP on grounders, 30 factors higher than the league common over that point interval. As with most points of the sport, hitting baseballs arduous is a helpful talent, and that is no completely different, as grounders hit beneath 95 mph have a .171 BABIP whereas these hit 95 mph or tougher have a .387 BABIP. Nonetheless, Stanton’s .271 batting common on balls in play is sort of matched by a .265 house run common on fly balls in play, and residential runs are lots higher!

I wrote about Stanton’s Corridor of Fame case about 18 months in the past, and for 2024 and the primary half of 2025, it didn’t appear like the story was getting any sunnier. On the time, I included Stanton’s projected profession WAR, house runs, and hits after every season of his profession. Right here’s an replace, with 2024 added:

The ZiPS projections are extra enthusiastic about Stanton proper now than they’ve been in fairly some time. His rest-of-season wRC+ projection is 127 within the easier mannequin that’s up to date every day, and 134 in essentially the most strong model of the mannequin. Naturally, this provides his projections a bump over what he had earlier than:

Eighty-seven extra house runs (83 in these projections, and an extra 4 for the remainder of 2025) places him at 533 for his profession, giving him some important clearance over the five hundred house run milestone and edging him a bit nearer to 2,000 hits. That’s good for the Yankees and good for Stanton’s probabilities of making the Corridor of Fame. I can’t converse to how different writers really feel about Stanton, however the model that we’re seeing in 2025 really makes me excited to observe him chase 500 house runs. I’ve the identical love for good spherical numbers that almost all baseball followers do, however for me, milestones are much more compelling when a participant is definitely good throughout the finish of the chase. Miguel Cabrera is a simple Corridor of Fame vote for me, however I bought little pleasure out of his five hundredth homer or 3,000th hit as a result of the achievement concerned him being — to be extraordinarily blunt — a extremely awful main league baseball participant for the higher a part of a decade.

For a similar purpose, the 2022-24 model of Stanton making it to 500 homers isn’t one thing I care an excessive amount of about, nor wouldn’t it make me extra prone to examine his field on a Corridor of Fame poll than if he had retired after 2021 or 2022. From 2022 to 2024, Stanton hit .212/.291/.454, good for 1.4 WAR in additional than 1,300 plate appearances, numbers that look extra like Eloy Jiménez or J.D. Davis than an all-time nice.

However this Stanton, who’s hitting plenty of balls within the air and can hopefully hit extra within the .250-.260 vary reasonably than .200, is a much more compelling participant. The hope is that nevertheless he discovered his interior Giancarlo, he doesn’t lose it once more. The 2025 model of Stanton is one who seems Cooperstown-bound reasonably than Cooperstown-meh, and that’s sufficient to make me flip over to the Yankees sport to see him play.