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.

A Proposed Trade

The Mets are rumored to have their eyes on some potentially-available high-profile outfield trade targets: Carlos Gonzalez and Giancarlo Stanton. One of these things is not like the other, so I'll ignore CarGo and focus on Stanton, one of the best players in the game. The speculation is that the Mets would have to give up both Zack Wheeler and Travis d'Arnaud, the two top prospects in the system, to land Stanton. I would not want to do that trade. I would, however, jump at a trade involving Wheeler and Wilmer Flores. Flores is the Mets' #2 position-player prospect, so he's not that much of a downgrade. He's not necessarily a downgrade at all for the Marlins, who have Placido Polanco playing third base, Wilmer's most likely position at this point, this year. That's not exactly a long-term solution. Their catchers, on the other hand, are the up-and-coming type. Now, I don't think that Wheeler + Flores by themselves are enough to bring back Stanton. Perhaps the Marlins might accept a Lucas Duda in addition? Their first-base situation is an absolute mess; they're going with essentially a fourth-string first baseman right now. And Duda has crazy raw power, just like Stanton; he would replace a lot of Stanton's home runs right away, if not his defensive prowess. You'd probably need to throw in a lower-level prospect or two to get the trade done, but I think Wheeler + Flores + Duda + low-level prospects for Stanton might make sense for both sides. Giancarlo is playing miserably right now and, honestly, just isn't in a position to succeed in Miami. You know he wants out, he's playing like someone who wants out, and there's no way the Marlins keep him anything like long-term. Meanwhile, Flores and Duda are both people who just don't really fit on the Mets, and Wheeler, well, we'd miss him, but we've got a lot of exciting pitching prospects and we don't have Giancarlo Stanton. If the Marlins wanted, say, Daniel Murphy instead of Duda, that would be fine as well; we've got Valdespin a potential decent replacement at second base. If Sandy Alderson could manage to pull off this trade without giving up d'Arnaud, and plunging the organization back into the depths of catching despair, I will be extremely impressed. And the Mets would, all of a sudden, look a lot more like a contender with Stanton's bat in the middle of their lineup.