2017 NL MVP Showing the Yankees What Leadership Looks Like
The New York Yankees have an official captain, and his name is Aaron Judge. His bat is powerful, but his presence exudes quiet strength. However, on this team that needs a dominant figure, a former MVP has stepped up and shown the way. He is the definition of the walking wounded for much of his eight-year stint, but his actions make you forget how brittle he has become. Giancarlo Stanton, when he is healthy, reminds you that he is a ball player. He plays to win and has provided most of the clutch postseason moments in his tenure here. If the recent examples are any indication, he is reborn as the soul and leader of this team.
When the Yankees acquired Stanton from the Miami Marlins, he was a four-time all-star and won the NL MVP in 2017. One year later, the 28-year-old superstar was in New York, where he would spend his prime years hitting home runs and playing the outfield, where he showed he was not a liability. The Yankees saw the pairing of him and Judge in the same light as Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, the Bash Brothers from the Oakland A's 1990 championship teams. It started well until the wheels started to come off Giancarlo’s, a kind of Benjamin Button in reverse.
In 2019, he suffered a left biceps strain followed by a more serious knee injury, which cost him more than 60 games. In the shortened 2020 campaign, he had a hamstring injury. A left quadriceps strain in 2021 reduced Stanton to a DH role, and his time in the outfield became a thing of the past. By now, it came to be expected that Stanton would miss large portions of the season. This led to an ill-timed comment from Yankee GM Brian Cashman, who appeared to take a shot at Stanton before the beginning of the 2024 campaign. He stated that Stanton was “injury prone” and being injured seemed to be part of his game.” Stanton did not respond in kind, but his feelings on it were quite clear. He was not pleased. This leads to the other side of the Stanton coin. He does get injured often, but he also does something regularly that no Yankee can claim in eight years: he is a clutch player in prime time.
The Yankees were a wild-card team in 2018. In the wild-card game against the Oakland A’s, he hit his first-ever home run in the “second season.” In nine playoff games, he had six hits, hit two home runs, scored four times, and drove in seven. The following season against the Minnesota Twins and Houston Astros, he tallied two home runs again and drove in seven with a .477 slugging percentage. In the 2020 Covid playoffs, Stanton exploded, playing in seven games, hitting .308 with eight hits while scoring seven times in a first-round win over the Cleveland Guardians, Indians at the time. He hit six home runs, tying Carlos Correa for the postseason lead, highlighted by that memorable game two three-run blast to deep left off of the Tampa Bay Rays Tyler Glasnow that went nearly 500 feet and disappeared into Petco Park, which nearly brought the Yankees back from a 5-1 deficit and would have given New York a 2-0 edge in the best of five.
In the 2021 Wild Card Game against the Boston Red Sox, Stanton had three hits, including a home run. However, the irony was that it could have been three if the Green Monster had not absorbed two of them. In the infamous four-game sweep by the Houston Astros in 2022, Stanton was one of the few who showed up again, hitting two home runs and driving in four. Stanton had proven to be a big-time performer when the lights were brightest. However, in 2024, Stanton exceeded all his previous efforts in a postseason to remember.
During the season, Stanton experimented with a Torpedo Bat and quietly dealt with tennis elbow in both arms. Despite these challenges, he delivered an unforgettable postseason performance that silenced Cashman for good. In the divisional playoffs against the Kansas City Royals, Stanton achieved a .375 batting average and even added a stolen base. In the ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians, he smacked out four crucial home runs and drove in seven RBI, earning the ALCS MVP while carrying the Yankees to the A.L. pennant. In his first World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hit a significant home run in Game One, giving the Yankees a temporary 2-1 lead. In Game Five, he hit another home run in Yankee Stadium that seemed poised to extend the series. The Yankees ultimately fell in five.
Before the start of the 2025 season, Stanton demonstrated his leadership when he challenged his teammates about showing off the A.L. championship rings. “This isn’t the one we wanted,” Giancarlos stated, “The one we want is in front of us. I’d better not see any of you guys wearing these around. Stanton proved then and there that he was not satisfied, unlike Yankee management. He showed he is a winner. This season has come down to playoff contention survival. The Yankees saw Aaron Judge out with an injury, which will remove him from right field and move him to DH for the remainder of this season. One of the players who took over in right was the biggest surprise of all, Giancarlo. The only way to get his bat in the lineup was to play the field. He has not embarrassed himself. He has made regular plays and unpacked a rocket arm that has not been seen in many moons. He is running the bases with abandon and out of necessity. He is hitting big home runs and impacting games.
The Yankees are desperate for wins, and Stanton recognized this. He is trying to carry this team to a place he believes they can achieve. If only the rest of the team would use this example and conduct themselves in a like manner, you might just see something special yet. It will be the difference between being an average non-playoff team and a hot World Series contender. Stanton has already put his body on the line in the name of victory. It's time for the rest to do the same.
