All right, what's the matter NOW?

 

Amidst all the folderol over exactly how The Brain is going to let us down this year, it has passed almost without notice that our buff, 2022 All-Star Game MVP has now been slumping for a good—or, really, bad—two months.

It's true. As of May 21st, Giancarlo Stanton, the second of our supposed Twin Towers, was batting .309, with a .925 OPS.

Since then, the average has slumped to just .228, and his OPS to a mere .807—both of which would be career season lows for the man who never met a model he couldn't bench press.

It speaks to just what a cosmic disappointment Giancarlo Stanton's time in New York has been, I think, that his plummet in productivity has been so little noticed. He has become an ancillary part of the team, more or less what Jason Giambi was for his last few years. Still a dangerous hitter, at times—but certainly far from Judge's Roger Maris, or someone you could even count on being able to play.

Now it looks as though he is hurting again.

His two at-bats in the Star Extravaganza aside, Stanton has started exactly 2 games in the last 8 days, along with 2, fruitless pinch-hitting efforts.

In that stretch, Giancarlo has gone 0-10, with 7 strikeouts, about as awful a record of futility since David Justice's 2001 World Series.

So what's wrong this time?

Well, it's been reported that Stanton has been feeling "exhausted" since even before the All-Star Game.

Sounds as if that it could be Covid. Or something else. Maybe mono?

Hey, young ballplayers get weary, you know they do get weary, and maybe we should try a little tenderness.

That is, at least, what Giancarlo has been trying.

The sporting sporty press has been reporting that, of late, Stanton has a new main squeeze—or press—in actress/model Priscilla Quintana (great name!).

And that he was seen partying with her in some LA night club after his award-winning night.

I can certainly see how that would be exhausting! I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it.

There are those churls who would say that G.C. just maybe should not have gone out to LA in the first place, if he was feeling so piqued. And that, you know, perhaps his night after receiving the sacred glass bat from Hair Dye Garvey and Billie Jean King should have consisted of retiring early, with a good book and a nice cup of chamomile tea at his bedside.

Not me! 

I know that boys will be boys, even—or especially—at $29 mill a year (going up to $32 mill next season). What right do we have to expect regular playing time from Mr. DL, when there are such fetching opportunities in the world?

Instead, I recommend that we indulge him thoroughly, and give him all the time that new love exhaustion requires.

No use risking our bicepped wonder on July games. A good 2 weeks—do I hear a month?—on the DL might be just the ticket, while we use the opportunity to see if Andujar and Florial really can contribute anything to the Yanks this season.

If it should prove that they can, no need to hurry the fragile, 32-year-old slugger back at all.

I say we give him all the time off he needs until next spring. Or whenever the next bench-pressing starts.