28-year-old outfielder Giancarlo Stanton is having yet another standout season in his first year in the Bronx.
Stanton was traded to the New York Yankees from the Miami Marlins in the offseason, and he had a very bad start to the season, however, he has worked his way back up to having numbers right around where they should be.
Stanton is now in a hot stretch. He’s homered in five of his last six games, most of them very meaningful home runs, as well, and is a big reason that the team is 6-1 in their last seven games. Giancarlo’s hot streak could not be coming at a better time, too, as Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez are each out with injuries until late August/early September.
When Judge went down with the broken wrist, the original game plan was to have Stanton play right field just about every day with Neil Walker, Miguel Andujar, and, to a lesser extent, Greg Bird mostly rotating in and out between first base, third base, and the DH spot while Shane Robinson is up as a temporary fourth outfielder in hopes that Clint Frazier could make a swift recovery from post-concussion migraines and come to be the fourth outfielder/DH guy. That hasn’t happened.
Frazier still has no real timetable for a return. It sounds like he’s been hitting a little bit and has a lot of “good” days, but then he has a couple of bad days and it kind of goes back to square one. You have to feel bad for the guy.
Meanwhile, it recently came to light that Giancarlo Stanton is nursing a leg injury. While it isn’t impacting his ability to perform (look at the aforementioned dingers), he and the Yankees have agreed that, at least for a little while here, he will be strictly in the DH spot for the foreseeable future. It is annoying because not only is Stanton the best defensive option in right field right now, but it also that we are seeing a lot of Shane Robinson lately.
Turns out this fourth outfielder is playing a lot more than "once a week." Shane Robinson makes his fifth straight start. Also 7 of 8, 8 of 11, and 10 of 15. https://t.co/Qb5HPr3Ik5
— James Smyth (@JamesSmyth621) August 11, 2018
Robinson has seen a lot of action lately, and it feels like everyone but Aaron Boone (or whoever is responsible for the lineups) agrees that he shouldn’t ever really play. Even Sunday, Robinson finally wasn’t in the starting lineup but he came in as a defensive replacement even though he isn’t a top-tier speed guy and he has a noddle arm.
Sugar Shane has run into a home run and a couple of semi-timely successful plate appearances, even though they look like they are by accident, but his overall line speaks for itself: .138/.242/.241 (36 wRC+).
Yeah, Shane is no good.
The Yankees reportedly tried to acquire another outfielder (with a preference for a right-handed bat) before the deadline a couple of weeks ago, but the price tags were still too high. They could still go get one off of waivers between now and the end of August, but at this point it seems like they’re just going to wait it out until Judge and/or Sanchez return and the lineup starts to take its best shape.
One thing the Yankees have done in an effort to keep guys in the lineup (although Shane still plays every day) is playing Neil Walker in right field. He’s started out there the last two games. It’s a new position for him, but he’s one of if not the team’s hottest hitters, so keeping him in the lineup is a must.
With Gleyber Torres back from the DL and Greg Bird pretty firmly entrenched at first base aside from a few doses a week of the Luke Voit experiment, Walker has been forced to play a lot of third base, DH, and now right field. He’s mostly handled it with grace, playing a silently electric defensive third base and he hasn’t hurt them in right field yet. I don’t think anyone expects lights-out defense in right from Walker as long as he stays pretty hot at the dish.
Hopefully Judge and Sanchez both come back hot in September and Giancarlo Stanton can stay hot while healing up whatever is aching his lower half, but right now those three things are what is responsible for Shane Robinson being shoved in Yankee fans’ faces day in and day out.
