Reigning MVP shows glimpse of former self
HOUSTON — After one of their best wins of this young season, late Tuesday night, Aaron Boone sought out one of the worst players from the game.
“There’s going to be many a night when you carry us when the rest of the team is struggling,” the Yankees manager told Giancarlo Stanton. “I know,” Stanton responded. Remind The Post to get Boone’s Kentucky Derby pick by Saturday.
In what has been a predictably difficult adjustment from irrelevant South Florida baseball to ultra-relevant Yankees life, the reigning National League Most Valuable Player has been so out of whack, so bad while his teammates were so good, that it felt odd Wednesday night when Boone’s prophecy turned true at Minute Maid Park.
It doesn’t mean Stanton has cured his condition of Bronx Superstar Transition. It does serve as a reminder, however, that the Yankees have many, many ways to defeat their opponent.
Stanton slammed two homers and a double and drove home all four of the game’s runs as Luis Severino recorded his first career shutout, dominating the defending-champion Astros in a 4-0 Yankees victory. The Yankees are now 11-1 in their past 12 games, and even the day’s beginning bad news — that southpaw Jordan Montgomery will miss at least six weeks with a strained flexor tendon in his left elbow — couldn’t depress or disrupt them.
“It’s always good to hear that,” Stanton, who went 0for-4 with three strikeouts in Tuesday’s 4-0 Yankees victory, said of Boone’s pep talk. “It’s been a long time coming. But I’ve just got to be patient. It’s a long season. There are going to be games like this, and there are going to be games when you’re on the other side.”
He should know, as Stanton’s Yankees career began with a game like this. In the March 29 opener against the Blue Jays in Toronto, he homered twice, double and tallied four RBIs, and that output caused some folks to hope he would avoid the Yankee Tax that afflicts nearly all players of his stature who join this team as a big name. That of course proved to be wishful thinking. Even after his Wednesday outburst, he holds an underwhelming .240/ .316/.479 slash line with 47 strikeouts, second-most in the American League.
Even more telling, until Wednesday, Stanton hadn’t im- proved alongside the weather and his teammates. During the 10-1 stretch that the Yankees brought into this game, Stanton carried a .227/.286/.341 line with 14 strikeouts. On the road, where he had thrived early, he had started this Anaheim/ Houston swing riding a 3-for-20 funk with eight strikeouts.
On this lovely night, though, with the ballpark’s roof open and with Didi Gregorius on first base and two outs, Stanton connected on a first-inning fastball by former AL Cy Young Award winner (and longtime Yankees menace) Dallas Keuchel and poked it into the right-field seats, giving the Yankees a quick 2-0 edge and, amazingly, the team’s first-ever homer against Keuchel after 62 ¹/3 innings, as per James Smyth of the YES Network.
“Good to break that, at least,” said Stanton, who launched a fourth-inning Keuchel slider over the tall scoreboard in left field for a 3-0 Yankees lead and doubled to right to score Aaron Hicks from third base for another insurance run. That he went the other way twice for extra bases, Stanton said, means he’s in sync.
Stanton now has seven homers. “At the end of the year, he’s going to have 50 home runs,” Severino said. Hmm … let’s bet the under. The big guy himself knows one night of carrying his teammates doesn’t absolve him.
“There are breakout nights, but you’ve got to go back to the drawing board and get it going. You need breakout weeks,” Stanton said. “One day ain’t going to do it. But this put us in a good place, and we’re set up to win the series. Put it away tomorrow.”
It was Stanton oozing with positivity on this night, and after his power display, that felt perfectly normal.