Giancarlo Stanton was having a pretty good season before the All-Star break. Over his last 30 games, though, he’s taken things to a new level: Stanton is batting .303/.424/.872 with 18 homers over that stretch, and has already eclipsed his career-high in homers. Back in 2014, when Stanton went yard 37 times and set his previous high, it led the league. Now, in 2017, he’s at 39 dingers and counting, and once again atop the leaderboard.
Giancarlo Stanton is destroying more baseballs than usual
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at all the dingers Stanton is hitting, the most goth baseball surgery, and the now public Yankees-Mets fight.
Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images
Again, it’s not like Stanton was doing poorly beforehand, as he batted .265/.347/.523 with 21 dingers over his first 81 games: that’s a 42-homer pace over a full season. July and August have been exceptional, though, and now Stanton is on pace for 56 homers if he plays in 160 games.
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Will he get there? That’s the thing about pacing: just as easily as Stanton upped his pace, he can also see it drop. And he wouldn’t even have to be playing poorly for it to happen, as the 40-plus-homer pace he was previously on can attest to. What we do know is every dinger he hits sets a new career-high for one of the most prolific sluggers of his era, and that three homers from now, he’s going to reach 250 for his career amid his age-27 season, which is pretty great for anyone, never mind someone who has only averaged 120 games per season since becoming a full-time big-leaguer.
Stanton has special power that pitcher-friendly Marlins Park cannot contain, and it might be peaking right now. Chris Davis was the last 50-homer hitter in MLB, back in 2013, and before that, Jose Bautista went yard 54 times in 2010. We might not have to wait much longer for the next one in MLB if Stanton keeps this torrid pace up for even a few more weeks.
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