June Swoon?

I took advantage of the rainout to call up my Cousin Dan, who has you may recall has a little fishing shack in a far-off corner of the Everglades, where he makes a living most by catching bluegills and feeding marshmallows to the alligators to entertain the tourists.

Cousin Dan has many special insights into baseball, due in part to his friendship with Anthony Rizzo, who likes to spend part of his offseason fashioning homemade wooden pikes with him, and spearing the local eels and bullheads, and sampling Cousin Dan's particular corn liquor recipe. Says it does wonders for his hand-eye coordination—the eel-spearing that is, not so much the King Kong.

Anyway, it was Cousin Dan who first assured me that Gleyber Torres was gonna be a good 'un, and when I started in all sour on Giancarlo—a not uncommon subject in my conversation these days, you will not be surprised to learn—he stopped me right there.

"That boy can go on a tear," he assured me. "He can hit 20 homers in 20 days, if he gets going," which sounded Biblical enough, at least, that I was comforted.

It was a good thing, too, because statistically, well, our Mr. Stanton is badly underperforming thus far.

Just take a look at his splits this year from his site on my cherished baseballreference— https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=stantmi03&year=2018&t=b:

                            PA       BA/ OBP/ SLG/ OPS
April/March:      128       .230/.313/.425/.737
May:                   101       .270/.337/.528/.865

That at least shows some evidence of improvement, which is maybe what gives Cousin Dan hope. But it looks much worse compared to Stanton's all-time numbers for these months (and mind you, these career month numbers have already been lowered by Stanton's abysmal 2018)—https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=stantmi03&year=Career&t=b:

                            PA       BA/ OBP/ SLG/ OPS
April/March:      780       .251/.340/.485/.825
May:                   792       .276/.359/.579/.938

Yikes, that's (comparatively) not good, is it? Historically, our Giancarlo is performing well below how he has started seasons in the past.

Now, I'm not saying that the past is necessarily prologue. Maybe Giancarlo is just getting adjusted to the pressure of playing for a real team in the big city, which would be good because it's not like the pressure is only going to increase as the pennant race goes on.  And maybe it's just all the rain and cold weather, which is also good because it's not like we get any of that around here come October.

But then historically, again from baseballreference's career splits, we have Giancarlo's June:

                           PA       BA/ OBP/ SLG/ OPS
June:                  801      .268/.346/.513/.859

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: over the course of his career so far, Stanton has generally gone into a bit of a swoon in June.

Well, maybe history won't be a guide.

Maybe Stanton will actually start to recognize curveballs, and learn that there are also righthanded pitchers in the game.  And after all, if he can get through June, July and August are traditionally his best months—before another dip again in September/October.

I honestly hope Cousin Dan is right. Because we'll have Stanton through 2028.