Yankees’ ‘reverence’ for Giancarlo Stanton goes beyond postseason heroics: ‘Our second captain’

Shortly after the Yankees lost a do-or-die Wild Card game to the Red Sox in 2021, the words of a hulking hitter echoed throughout Fenway Park’s cramped visitor’s clubhouse.

With the Yankees disappointing themselves and their fans, the player delivered a poignant speech about tuning out external noise, ignoring the pitfalls and rabbit holes of social media, and dismissing the distractions that come with playing in the New York market.

“You want to find out how great you think you are or how terrible you are and everything in between, it’s all there,” manager Aaron Boone said, recalling the message that Giancarlo Stanton shared that night.

With Aaron Judge still a few years away from becoming the Yankees’ captain, Stanton found himself commanding the room. Boone deemed the veteran’s sermon so “profound” that it’s become part of the manager’s annual address at the start of spring training.

“Just the way he said it in 2021, I’ll never forget it,” Boone said. “It really stuck with me.”

Brian Cashman didn’t know that the Yankees were getting such a leader when he landed Stanton in a blockbuster deal with the Marlins prior to the 2018 season. The Yankees held his makeup in high regard, but he had played in a minor market with little scrutiny and fanfare.

There was no telling how Stanton would handle the pressures of New York, but he sought the challenge after blocking trades to the Cardinals and Giants. “Right out of the gate,” Cashman said he saw a player with “really serious leadership abilities.”

“He’s super smart, very thoughtful, accountable. He’s got words of wisdom that he tries to impart on his teammates, and he certainly leads by example,” Cashman continued hours before Stanton drilled a 446-foot, game-tying, two-run homer in Game 5 of the ALCS. “We knew we were getting a big difference maker bat-wise, but we also got a difference maker in that clubhouse.”

That remains the case today, as Stanton, who was named MVP of the 2024 ALCS, still holds a leadership position with Judge in the second year of his captaincy.

“He speaks up in our hitters’ meetings quite a bit,” Judge said after Stanton crushed a three-run homer in Game 4 of the ALCS. “He leads by example, which you guys saw tonight. He’s just a special player. When anybody has a chance to kind of pick where they want to go, he’s like, ‘I want to come to New York. I want to be here in these environments, in these situations.’ It just speaks volumes about the type of character he has and just the type of person he is.”

Talk of Stanton’s clubhouse presence has overlapped with another strong postseason, as the designated hitter was hitting .300/.400/.767 with four home runs and nine RBI before his Game 5 blast.

On Oct. 9, Stanton crushed the 12th homer of his postseason career in Game 3 of the ALDS. The go-ahead blast proved decisive, as the Yankees won, 3-2.

But instead of praising Stanton’s clutch bat, Juan Soto commended his demeanor and guidance that evening.

“He’s coming every day with a smile on his face,” Soto said. “It doesn’t matter how things are going. I feel like I’ve been learning a lot of things from him and Judge. G’s a veteran. He knows how everything goes. If you have any doubts in what you’re doing here and there, you can always come to him, and he’s going to have an answer.

“I feel he’s really our second captain.”

While Stanton’s leadership has been a topic of conversation throughout these playoffs, the typically reserved superstar downplayed his contributions behind the scenes.

“I’m here for everybody,” Stanton said, matter of fact. “Any bit of information, anything to discuss. It’s an interesting time where you need to have the conversations and know the weight of everything that goes into these games. But you don’t always have those. It’s kind of like, ‘Oh, we know, yada, yada,’ but you’ve got to have those discussions and talk everybody through it, whether you’ve been there before, whether you haven’t.”

While Stanton’s recent heroics have cemented his status as an all-time postseason slugger, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing during his seven seasons in the Bronx.

In 2018, Stanton’s first year with the team, criticism followed the then-reigning MVP, even as he put up large power numbers. If there was ever a honeymoon period for him in New York, it didn’t last long.

“He comes here as an MVP, big contract, big acquisition,” Boone said. “He probably had like [38] homers, 100 RBI, but nothing about it was easy or good enough in a lot of ways.”

But that public perception helped Stanton prepare for a long-term future in pinstripes.

“He learned how to deal with all that noise and realized, as good as anyone I’ve seen, that it is just noise,” Boone continued. “It’s all B.S.

“He doesn’t care about the noise around him.”

That’s helped, as the noise grew louder throughout the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Those campaigns were particularly hard for Stanton, as lower-body injuries and career-worst numbers had a large segment of the fanbase wondering if the Yankees had any chance of dumping his exorbitant contract.

Stanton hit just .191/.275/.420 with an 86 wRC+ last year. Then, over the offseason, Cashman irritated the player and his agent when he said that injuries were part of Stanton’s game.

Stanton responded by showing up to spring training with a revamped body and training regimen.

While the 34-year-old still ended up missing time with a hamstring strain, Stanton enjoyed a relatively resurgent year, hitting 27 homers to go with 72 RBI, a .233/.298/.475 slash line and a 116 wRC+.

Now he’s recapturing his preexisting reputation as a reliable postseason performer.

“Just hyper focused,” Stanton said of his ability to thrive this time of year. “I understand how important each pitch, each moment is. I understand that you’re not always going to be successful in those moments, but [I’ll do] anything I can do, any bit of information or video or swings, to be in my best spot during this moment.”

At the same time, Stanton is also reinforcing his role within the Yankees’ clubhouse as they head to the World Series in pursuit of the championship they coveted when they first acquired him.

“He doesn’t say a ton necessarily,” Boone said. “He’s not a big-time talker, but when he speaks, we all listen up.”