Stanton's Slumps

Giancarlo Stanton is playing very badly right now. Like, very badly. For the three previous years of his career, Stanton's average 162-game season would have included 41 home runs, 101 runs driven in, 36 doubles, and a triple-slash line of .270/.350/.553. Those are good numbers. They probably also don't represent his ceiling; he's pretty clearly got the best raw power in baseball, or very nearly the best. Through 13 games this year (a figure depressed by several games he missed with a minor injury), Stanton has had 48 at-bats. He has nine hits. Two of them were doubles; none of them were home runs. He's struck out 20 times, which in fairness is only somewhat above his career rate of roughly 3 at-bats per strikeout. He has walked nine times, which is solid; oddly, only one of those was an intentional walk. That's an overall line of .188/.316/.229, which is, well, decent for a pitcher. Not very good for the best pure power hitter in the game. Also, Stanton has only driven in a single solitary run, and that's a new update since the last time I had checked, when he had 0 RBI on the year. What gives?

People will often say, of various players around this time of year, that if you slump like so-and-so has done to start the year in August, no one notices. It's not quite true; at the very least the people watching a given team every day, the announcers and the manager and the diehard fans, notice the 3-for-20 slumps in August. But let's consider whether Stanton has had a slump like this before. The answer is that yes, he has. Three times before he's had a home run drought of at least this magnitude, once in each of his full seasons. But only one of those, his rookie year, was as bad as his overall play this April.


Last year, Stanton's drought was also a season-opening one. He didn't hit his first home run until April 29th, in his 20th game of the year. Through the 28th, he had 16 hits, including four doubles, in 65 at-bats, along with 4 walks. He had driven in 5 runs, struck out 17 times, and had a slash line of .245/.290/.308. That's bad, but that batting average is above where his slugging percentage is sitting right now. Stanton wasn't hitting the ball out of the yard, but he was getting his hits, and driving in a few runs. He was not an offensive black hole. Also, from April 29th onward, in just 104 games, he hit 37 home runs. That's a 162-game pace of 58. Getting off to a slow start didn't slow him down in the end.

In 2011, Stanton had more of a summer slump. From June 12th through July 5th, Stanton went 20 games without a bomb. In 78 at-bats, he had nineteen hits, including a pair each of doubles and tirples. He walked three times against 30 strikeouts (!!!), and drove in seven runs. His overall line was .244/.268/.321, again, bad but not like what he's doing now. Intriguingly, in both of these slumps his batting average on balls in play was quite high, something that is also true of his 2013 to date. This suggests that, even when he slumps, he hits the ball very hard when he does hit it, he just doesn't hit it very often and isn't lifting it even when he does make contact. Stanton's home run power recovered after this slump as well; he hit 18 bombs in 70 games from July 6th onward, on pace for 42 over a full season.

But in 2010, he had a much, much worse slump. It came in late August, from the 14th through the 31st. It covered 16 games, of which only 14 were starts. Stanton got 54 at-bats, slightly more than he's had yet this year. He had only six hits, including just one double. Two walks, twenty-one strikeouts. Not a single run driven in. That's a .111/.158/.130 line, truly pitcher-esque. Interestingly, though, he didn't keep his BAbip up; it fell to .182, suggesting either that for once in his life Giancarlo (then Mike) Stanton was making weak contact or that he was hitting a lot of balls right at people for a couple of weeks. Once again, though, the power came back after this slump; for the month of September (and a few days in October), Stanton hit 8 home runs in 30 games, a 44-HR pace over 162 games.

It seems, in other words, that massive slumps are just something Giancarlo Stanton does. Every once in a while, the best power hitter in baseball will see his power dry up for a couple of weeks. These four slumps have covered 68 of the 386 games Stanton has played. His 93 career home runs have come in the other 318 games, a pace of 47 bombs a year. After each slump he's gone back to being a beast. (Interestingly, the Mets have had the distinct fortune of playing the Marlins during three of Stanton's four slumps, which might explain why I have the feeling that we always handle him decently despite the fact that he's hit ten bombs against us.) Stanton's just a streaky player, and when he's hot, pitchers better watch out.

So, is this time different? Well, it's his worst slump since his rookie year. That slump was much worse than this one overall, though it might have involved more bad luck than the current run of bad play. It feels possible to me that there's a genuine motivational issue right now. Stanton is known to be displeased with his situation, with the apparently betrayal of Marlins management in trading away all the other good players on his team approximately one year after acquiring them. I can easily believe that that's affecting his play subconsciously, and I can even imagine that he might be almost deliberately playing poorly to force the Marlins' hand in trading him. (That, obviously, would be a bit of a problem, though I can obviously sympathize with his plight.) If either of those hypotheses are true, the slump might continue until something about his circumstances change. I can't quite believe he'll never hit a home run, 'cause, come on, he's Giancarlo Stanton. Or maybe one of these days he'll flip his switch back to "on," and he'll start mashing again: he's done it before. Definitely something to keep an eye on.