Giancarlo Stanton was taking extra bases. He was sliding, dancing off first, chugging around the paths, even stealing a base. (He had one this year - his 43rd over 17 seasons.) A fuse was gonna blow, a hatchway was gonna burst. The Edmund Fitzgerald of Designated Hitters was going to sink. And everybody knew.
They're listing him as "day to day." This is bullshit, of course. He'll be out four weeks. Maybe six. He's Giancarlo Stanton. There's no such thing as day-to-day. There's week-to-week, maybe month-to-month.
Damn. Right in a 7-game winning streak. Third best record in baseball...
Because Stanton bats RH, it won't free up The Martian or Spencer Jones, or much of anybody down in Scranton. For now, the best RH remedy might be Paul DeJong, a 32-year-old utility IF, who is hitting .193 with 5 HRs. Yeesh. Is Pronk Hafner still playing?
Wait. There is another name. I hesitate to say it. Anthony Volpe. He's four games into a minor league rehab assignment. Too small a sample size to matter, but he did hit a homer the other day. If Volpe takes over, maybe we get a month to see - once and for all - whether he can hit MLB pitching. Does the prodigal son of New Jersey have a month in him?
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6 comments:
Vibration felt, loud thud heard, stern sagging. The Carl D Bradley of designated hitters.
Everyone knew she was structurally unsound, shouldn't have pushed her in rough weather.
Paul DeJong would be typical of Genius Cashman.
If Stanton goes IL, more Grichuk as Judhe slides into the DH. And then, yes - Volpe.
Before we get carried away about Volpe hitting AA and AAA pitching, let's remember a few things:
1- After 3 years, Volpe is what he is- a stupid batter with limited hitting talent, combined with poor organizational coaching.
2- Minor league pitchers tend to be closer to the middle of the plate and less accomplished than MLB pitchers.
3-In the minors, while they do have scouting reports on opposing players, it's much more limited. In the majors, it's much more extensive and data-driven. Also, while winning is always important, it is less so in the minors. More emphasis is placed on player development (although the Yankees look like an outlier here). The bottom line is that they don't have " the book" on Volpe as they do in The Show.
I will give odds that, given enough at-bats, he will live up to the stats on the back of his baseball card. And that's not very good.
Sounds good to me. Old man bat speed gets much of summer to rest so he be primed for playoff clutch hitting. Bring us our wrong handed farm hands and surplus guns to hammer the weaker than expected AL East.
I vote for a wrong handed scrantonian
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