STANTON NAMED LEAGUE MVP
For the better part of a decade, sometimes in awe and often in disappointment, the baseball world wondered: What could Giancarlo Stanton do if he stayed healthy and productive for an entire season?
The answer came Thursday: win the National League Most Valuable Player award.
Stanton — the sport’s pre-eminent slugger and the face of the Miami Marlins, who are trying to trade him this offseason — earned baseball’s top individual honor, the first Marlin to do so in the club’s quarter-century history. He beat out two other finalists, Cincinnati’s Joey Votto and Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt, in a crowded field of candidates in a vote by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America before the postseason.
Stanton finished with 302 points and 10 of 30 first-place votes, edging Votto, who had 300 and 10. Theirs was the fourth-closest MVP race since the award’s creation in 1931. Gold--
schmidt garnered 239 points and four first-place votes.
Rampant speculation in recent days about whether the Marlins’ new management would trade Stanton and where he could go, combined with the anticipation of the MVP announcement and the announcement itself, made for an unusual mix of emotions, Stanton said.
“It’s an interesting feeling and situation for me,” Stanton said during a teleconference with reporters. “This is the only place I’ve known, but I also understand the business part of it and the direction the new ownership wants to go.
“The thoughts [this week] were up and down, pretty bipolar. Everything that’s going on, how is this going to turn out, what’s going to happen with my team and my teammates and me, etc. It’s a lot of thoughts going on, but luckily I don’t have to worry about playing at 7 o’clock every night [with] those thoughts.”
Marlins left fielder Marcell Ozuna, who won a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger while setting career bests in all major offensive categories, finished 16th with eight points.
With the win, Stanton, 28, also joins an exclusive club of South Florida athletes to be named league MVP. The only others to do so are the Heat’s LeBron James (NBA MVP in 2011-12 and 2012-13) and the Dolphins’ Dan Marino (NFL MVP in 1984).
“That’s definitely good company,” Stanton said. “I’m glad to be stabled right next to them. One is still going and being great and one is already Hall of Fame, you know what he’s done. Very cool. Very cool place to be.”
This award caps the best year of Stanton’s career and perhaps the best offensive year the Marlins have ever seen. While playing a career-high 159 games in his first season without injury since 2011, Stanton led everyone with 59 homers and 132 RBI. The former is the ninth-highest total in a season in major league history, tied with Babe Ruth (1921). The latter was a single-season franchise record.
Stanton also had the top slugging percentage in the NL (.631) while getting on base at a .376 clip and batting .281, 41 points better than his 2016 average. He mixed in 32 doubles while scoring 123 runs.
The watershed moment for Stanton and the Marlins comes three years after he finished second in MVP voting. In 2014, he was a favorite while hitting an NL-best 37 homers, but missed most of the last three weeks after getting beaned by a pitch. Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw won instead.
“He was my MVP hands down in 2014, before he got hit in the face,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said.
For Hill and others who have known Stanton since the Marlins drafted him as a 17-year-old in the second round of the 2007 draft, Stanton being named MVP represents the fulfillment of the potential they have long seen.
“I remember the first report when he was identified as an amateur,” Hill said. “And then to be able to draft him, to be able to sign him, to watch him hit 39 home runs in Greensboro, to watch him go to Jacksonville and win a championship, to watch him get to the big leagues in June 2010 — I’ve known him every part, every step of his professional career.
“To know that you have that kind of history with the player, to see him become what you always knew he was going to become — MVP, best player in the league, most prolific power hitter in the game — it’s a tremendous feeling.”
The MVP accolade lengthens the list of others Stanton has gathered in recent weeks: NL Outstanding Player (voted on by players), a Silver Slugger (voted on by managers and coaches), the Hank Aaron Award (voted on by a panel of Hall of Famers), and a spot on the Sporting News All-Star team (voted on by league executives). Stanton was also a Gold Glove finalist for his work in right field and was an All-Star in July.
His monster season silenced doubters — or the “haters” as he has called them on social media — after he began the year facing questions about his ability to stay healthy and whether he was worth his historic contract.
Instead, Stanton has become one of the biggest stories of the hot-stove season. The Marlins have engaged in preliminary trade talks for the slugger with a reported eight teams during this week’s GM meetings in Orlando. That’s part of a larger effort from CEO Derek Jeter and the new ownership group to turn around a franchise that is financially struggling and has had a losing record all eight years of Stanton’s career.
Only one player in major league history was named MVP and traded in the same offseason: Alex Rodriguez, who was the 2003 AL MVP for the Rangers and was traded to the Yankees the following February.
Stanton said his preference would be to stay in Miami if the team’s needs, which are largely on the pitching side, could be addressed.
“But it needs to be thoroughly addressed, not just somewhat addressed. It needs to be a huge push now and a definite contending addressed matter,” Stanton said.
Does he think that will happen?
“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest,” Stanton said. “But I know all teams have plenty of money.”