POWERFUL IMPRESSION
Stanton brings long-displayed slugging prowess to stage he’s always coveted
GIANCARLO Stanton has made four All-Star teams, led the National League in homers twice and won an MVP award.
What he hasn’t done, however, is play in the postseason — or even finish a season with a .500 record.
“He’s always wanted his at-bats to be significant and have a chance at the playoffs,’’ said Mike Stanton, Giancarlo’s father, who watched his son get introduced as a Yankee on Monday from his home in Southern California. “Now he does. He’s a competitor. He’s not playing just for the sake of playing and putting up numbers. He wants the opportunity to prove that he can do it when it matters most. He’s never had to do it before, but it’s within reach now.”
Stanton is coming to The Bronx because of a stunning trade that was finalized Monday, when the Yankees sent Starlin Castro and a pair of minor leaguers to the Marlins in exchange for the reigning NL MVP and up to $30 million of relief on the remaining $295 and 10 years of Stanton’s monster deal.
The 28-year-old made it clear he wasn’t pleased with how things had been run in Miami under previous owner Jeffrey Loria and how Derek Jeter was running the team since the former Yankees great took over in South Florida in October.
Like Loria before him, Jeter is looking to trim expenses — even if it means trading the club’s main assets.
And Mike Stanton believes his son’s new setting, including the added glare of the spotlight at Yankee Stadium, will serve him well.
“He knows the pressure and expectations that come with New York,’’ Stanton said. “He’ll take that over losing every year.’’
THE ELDER Stanton, a retired postal worker, was hoping that if the Marlins did decide to deal his son, he would end up with the Dodgers. Sunland, Calif., where Giancarlo spent most of his time growing up, is only about 15 miles from Dodger Stadium.
It’s where Mike took Giancarlo — still called Mike by his father and most of those who know him from when he was younger even though he’s been called Giancarlo in baseball since 2012 — to see his first major league games.
Stanton’s favorite Dodger was Raul Mondesi and father and son were at a Dodgers-Cardinals game on April 23, 1999, when Fernando Tatis hit two grand slams in one inning against Los Angeles.
That’s one home run feat Stanton has yet to match in his career, but he’s got a pretty impressive list, including the 59 homers he hit this past season.
The Marlins drafted Stanton in the second round, 76th overall, in the 2007 draft out of Notre Dame H.S. in Sherman Oaks.
It was at Notre Dame that Stanton emerged as a threesport athlete who was also recruited by USC to play football and baseball.
“I felt like he could have been a great football player, but his future was baseball,” said Kevin Rooney, Stanton’s football coach at Notre Dame and the school’s athletic director. “I think he could have been a great tight end.’’
Instead, he signed with the Marlins after two standout seasons with Notre Dame, a private school that has produced other major leaguers such as ex-Yankees Jack McDowell, Brendan Ryan and Chris Dickerson, as well as Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick.
“So many people passed him up in the draft because they said he couldn’t hit the curveball,” said Tom Dill, Stanton’s baseball coach at Notre Dame. “Who can hit a curveball in high school? I knew he would figure it out.”
The first signs of that came in his first full season in the minors, when Stanton hit 39 homers with Single-A Greensboro (N.C.) in 2008.
“That was a new kind of hot for both of us,’’ said Mike Stanton, who went to some games that season.
TWO YEARS later, Stanton was called up by the Marlins in June, when he was 20.
He hit one homer in his first 68 plate appearances, but finished the year with 22 homers in just 100 games, displaying the power he’d always shown.
Dill and Stanton’s father both tell the story of a home run Stanton hit against St. Paul High School during his senior year.
“Mike hit a line drive and the pitcher ducked,” Dill said.
“Mike started sprinting around the bases. Meanwhile, the center fielder looked caught off guard, but it was over the fence. It almost wasn’t safe to be out there.”
Not surprisingly, Stanton’s batting practices were impressive, as well.
During his senior year, as many top prospects do, Stanton took BP with a wooden bat in front of major league scouts.
“He’s the only guy I’ve seen where it didn’t seem to matter if he was hitting with wood or aluminum,’’ Dill said. “By then, he looked a lot like the way he does now. He was probably 6-5, 215 instead of 6-6, 250, but you could see how he was able to do what he did.”
His power was on display even before he got to Notre Dame.
Mike Stanton said his son wasn’t always “the biggest or the fastest,’’ although he was a good athlete and tall for his age.
He still managed, at age 10 or 11, to hit a homer off a telephone pole in Little League.
“It bounced back on the field,” Stanton said. “I’m sure the ball would have bounced that far whoever hit the ball there, but Mike was the only one who did.” L AT E R , Stanton spent the first two years of high school at Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, in the San Fernando Valley, where Stanton spent most of his youth.
Angel Espindola was a first-year assistant coach with the team when Stanton was a sophomore.
“He had ridiculous power,” Espindola said. “Since I had just started coaching, I remember seeing him and thinking, ‘Is this normal for a high school kid?’ Obviously, it wasn’t.”
Unlike most others who watched Stanton play, Espindola’s most vivid memory isn’t of a home run, which were common.
“The fence at our field wasn’t that far, only 263 and 265 feet down the lines, so Mike had no problem clearing that, even though it was about 30 feet high,’’ Espindola said. “The one that sticks out is when he hit a line drive that hit off our chain-link fence and made the whole thing sway back and forth. It was unbelievable.’’
The following summer, Stanton went to a football scrimmage at Notre Dame with a friend and soon transferred. “We were sorry to see him go,” Espindola said. No doubt many around Miami are, as well. Stanton said he told Jeter he didn’t want to be part of another rebuilding process with the Marlins and with the new ownership looking to slash payroll yet again, that’s what the right fielder would have been in for.
“Miami was going in the direction Mike didn’t want to go in,” his father said. “I haven’t seen too many people praise what they’re doing down there. I didn’t see it coming. The last series of the year, I was at a game, still buying Marlins shirts.”
And he’s pleased with Giancarlo’s next destination, as is Dill.
“He’s made for this and he’s made for the Yankees,” Dill said. “He’s tough. I know people can crumble there. Mike won’t be one of them.’’
On Monday, the news was still sinking in with his father.
“He’s a Yankee now,” Stanton said. “That has a lot of meaning. It’s a lot different than with the Marlins. It’s like a new world for him.”