STANTON’S GOT THE ‘RIGHT’ IDEA:
Stanton’s stance shift provides power to right
Sixty-six games into his 2017 season, Giancarlo Stanton was putting up solid numbers with the Marlins, hitting .277 with 17 home runs, so he was on pace to hit between 40-45 home runs, which would have been a career high.
Yet he believed he wasn’t getting the most from his at-bats. He felt he was getting himself out, as scouts like to say, too often by opening his shoulder and hips prematurely and pulling off pitches.
So on June 19 Stanton decided to try something rather radical and close his stance, which he’d never done during his career.
Nobody had suggested the idea to him. By studying video of his at-bats over the years, Stanton had become convinced he needed to try something that would put himself in a better position to hit.
“I’d seen on video that when I would strike in a closed position I hit the ball hard,” Stanton was saying at his locker on Thursday. “Homers, hits, balls to the opposite field, really everywhere; so I thought I’d start in that position.
“Not too many people agreed with it, but I wanted to try it.”
Stanton went 2-for-5 that first night in a game against the Nationals, most significantly hitting a game-tying home run to right-center off righthanded reliever Jacob Turner in the seventh inning.
It gave him reason to believe he was onto something even though the new stance felt uncomfortable.
“I felt a little locked,” Stanton recalled. “Not as free at first, but I was in the right position. I just didn’t have the full mobility I was used to feeling, but I realized that even if I pulled off, the bottom frame was still there, and my hips could leak only so much.”
So he stayed with it, and as he became more com- fortable with the new stance, he became even more closed, with his left leg much closer to the plate than his right. And soon enough Stanton was hitting home runs at the highest rate of his career.
Over his final 93 games, in fact, Stanton hit .284 with 42 home runs, giving him 59 for the season, which helped earn him the National League MVP award.
Now he’s a Yankee and looking forward to seeing what he can do over a full season with his new approach.
“I’m sticking with it because it made a difference,” he said. “Before I would let my hips leak too much at times. The closed stance keeps my hips from swaying — it locks them more into the field. When my hips would open the bat would drag through the zone.”
Aaron Boone, who as a TV analyst last year saw the difference Stanton’s change made, said it’s even more striking now that he watches him up close at the batting cage.
“Standing behind him, seeing how closed he is, that’s something that would be difficult for a lot of people,” Boone said. “But he’s so uniquely skilled, with such bat speed and power that it allows him to hang in there, it allows him to be incredibly short with his swing.
“And what’s impressive is that as short as he is with the swing, he can hit the ball with so much impact without even having to generate much with his body.”
In particular, the closed stance helps Stanton drive the ball to the opposite field more naturally, and as is the case for Aaron Judge, Yankee Stadium’s right field fence will be a routine fly ball away.
“It certainly keeps him from leaking a little bit and coming off certain pitches,” Boone said. “And with his strength, in our ballpark it will allow him to mis-hit some balls the other way and still be able to hit them for home runs.”
The possibilities for Stanton as a Yankee are dizzying, especially considering how pitcher-friendly his former home ballpark in Miami played.
“If he stays healthy he almost can’t help but hit 60 home runs,” a major-league scout said Thursday. “After seeing the way that closed stance helped him stay on the ball, he’s going to do a lot of damage there. I can remember personally seeing a handful of line drives to the gap or the wall in rightcenter (in Miami) that would have been home runs in Yankee Stadium.”
In his batting practice sessions here so far, Stanton has made a point of hitting the ball mostly to the opposite field, and far more line drives than towering blasts.
In that sense his shorter, quicker stroke makes him different from Judge, who hits more moon shots. Judge takes a different approach, starting with an open stance that he says he’s always had.
“I see the ball better that way,” Judge said. “Because my right eye is dominant, I’ve gotta make sure I get both eyes on the ball.
“But I like watching (Stanton’s) approach. He’s not always hitting majestic home runs, he’s hitting hard line drives in I the gap and using the whole field.” t’s not as if Stanton wasn’t a feared slugger before he made the stance change last June. But the evidence says he’s a better hitter since then, which makes it all the more fascinating to see what he’ll do over a full season as a Yankee.