Giovanni Giancarlo Mike Stanton's Role

We won a huge game tonight.

The bullpen stood up and said to Jordan Montgomery," we've got your back."  They delivered eight innings of shut-out ball against the reigning world champions.

Gary Sanchez, who seems to be single-handidly winning all of our close games lately, did it again with a ninth inning three run blast off Houston's excitable closer.

But during that ninth inning, I figured out how Stanton is contributing to this offense.

It is not through clutch hitting, tough at-bats or home runs.  In fact, in a close game, I never expect him to deliver an RBI.

Here is what he brings to the Yankees for the players we traded and for the $165 million Hal pays him:

Pay close attention now  -

When Stanton strikes out hopelessly, and loses his balance, on a " hanging curve ball" that catches the inside third of the plate, he is giving the Houston pitcher a false level of confidence.

The Houston pitcher tells himself, " if I can make last year 's NL MVP and home run leader look that bad on a hanging curve over the inside third of the plate,  I can make anybody look that bad with that pitch."

So, when Gary Sanchez comes to the plate, the Houston pitcher starts him off with the exact same pitch; a hanging curve ball over the inside third of the plate.  Which, contrary to the pitcher's expectation, Gary launches 440 feet over the centerfield wall for the Yankee win.

So don't think Giancarlo or Giovanni or even Mike Stanton seems to be hopelessly lost, and of little value to our offense.  His job is to give false confidence to opposing pitchers, so that they will use the same ineffective pitches, on which Giancarlo strikes out and falls down,  on our real hitters so that they can hit them out of the ballpark.

We learn something every game.

Giancarlo is not striking out for nothing.