Stanton Heating Up

Last season, once Mike Stanton hit his 50th career home run, I speculated he would reach 500 career blasts in his mid-30s. The 22-year-old slugger got off to a slow start this season; however, and did not hit his first home run of the year until April 29th. The muggy April for Stanton was due, mostly in part, to his knee injury he incurred in Spring Training, but also to his inability to adjust to the new stadium. The 500 home run prediction was on the basis that he would maintain a average of one home run every 4.32 games, and not be hindered by major injuries over a decently long career. However, with a 6’5,” 245 lb. frame, Stanton will likely be offset by a fair share of injuries over a 15-20 year career.

Giancarlo Stanton was homer-less for the first four weeks of the season, but finally went deep on April 29th, jacking a 450-foot bomb to dead center, defying the dimensions of Marlins Park. And now, he has homered in five of his last six games. At the end of this season, I will redo the math with the larger sample size to better estimate Stanton’s career figures.

It’s a good thing that Giancarlo Stanton is out of his slump because I would have recommended he start going by “Mike” again, rather than by his birth name, Giancarlo, had he not started hitting home runs. Besides, “Mike,” is immensely easier to type than “Giancarlo,” and as long as he keeps launching five ounce baseballs into orbit, I will be typing his name a lot on this blog.

Stanton’s most impressive home runs came last season when he hit to the right field upper deck in New York, the upper left field deck at Sun Life, left-centerfield seats at Coors Field, and (in my mind) most impressively off the left-centerfield bleachers at Sun Life Stadium (shown above).

According to ESPN, his home run at Coors Field was his longest, measuring 466 (or so) feet, but I have a problem with that. That home run was a fly ball that was coming down, and landed 466 feet from the plate, but the line drive to centerfield in the above video was still carrying, a lot, when it hit the bleachers. Maybe it only hit 430 feet from the plate, but had the bleachers not been there, it would have landed 500 (or more) feet away.

As I always say, if you go to a Marlins game, get there early to watch Giancarlo take batting practice. His past BP feats include hitting a 500-foot blast onto the left field concourse at AT&T Park, as well as lodging a ball in the left field scoreboard at Petco Park. It’s a fact that he’s big, strong, and dominant, but we can only hope that Giancarlo Stanton keeps up his dominance for years to come.