Audit This!

 

So now that we know that your New York Yankees' promised organizational "audit" is a farce, surprise, surprise—instead of bringing in some impartial agency to actually audit the Yankees, the team will take a look at some other, unnamed organization and, I'm sure, learn oodles—it is time that we here at IIHIIFIIC initiate our OWN audit.

Item Number 1: 

Giancarlo Stanton is DONE.

It gives me no pleasure to write this. Stanton seems like a good enough sort, and surely it can't be pleasant for him to know that he is washed up at 33.

But he is.

Sorry, but for all the hopes he raised, Big G has never lived up to anything like the promise he showed when he came to the Yanks in 2018 at just 28.

Going by OPS, Stanton has never reached the heights of his four best seasons in Miami; never managed to reach an OPS of .900. The closest he came was .894 in 2019—when he played all of 18 games.

The injuries, we all know about. Stanton has missed 321 games—or nearly 38 percent of all Yankees contests—since coming over. Figures that would have been even worse without the Covid season.

When he can play, his career has been on almost a straight decline in New York, his OPS averages going from .852 to .894 (18 games) to .887 (23 games) to .870 to .759 to .695.

One might have thought that Giancarlo hit rock bottom last year, when his game completely fell apart after May, and he wound up batting all of .211.

Nope. Turned out it was just a ledge—from which he tumbled down to .191 this year.  Has there ever been a Yankees power hitter—I mean a guy counted on to be one of the one or two big boppers in the middle of the lineup—who has hit .191 in over 100 games?

Don't bother looking it up. The answer is no.

Since coming up from Florida, every aspect of Giancarlo's game has crumbled. A credible outfielder in Miami, now he can barely move in right field. An occasional base stealer—he swiped 36 in 50 attempts in the Sunshine State—he has only 6 since coming to the Bronx, none since 2020.

Once Stanton was able to carry the team with occasional binges, and most notably in the playoffs. But that was always overrated. His postseasons in New York have mostly been distinguished by his failures: that .222 ALDS against the Red Sox, with no homers, no ribbies, and his awful Craig Kimbrel at-bat in 2018; the 2019 ALCS against Houston where he begged out of the lineup even though he'd been able to homer AFTER sustaining said injury; his 2020 game in Boston, where he stood and watched his single plunk off the Green Monster.

The man is done, and he ain't coming back. Hey, it happens. What the New York Yankees need to do is figure out what to do about this hideous mistake.

Stanton still has 4 years and $118 million to be paid by the Yankees (though $20 million of that will be picked up by Miami). Even worse, he is taking up valuable roster space.

Pay him some discount to leave? Why should he take it? Pay someone else to take him? Maybe—but it's doubtful HAL would ever do that. Play him in the outfield until he breaks, and the Yanks can get the insurance money?

I dunno.  But the results of the first IIHIIFIIC Audit are clear:  Hey hey, ho ho, Big G Stanton's got to go.