BEAN THERE, DONE THAT
FOUR YEARS LATER, STANTON UNFAZED BY GETTING DRILLED IN FACE
TAMPA — There was an unusual sight when Giancarlo Stanton came to the plate for the first time on Saturday against Matt Harvey of the Mets: The face guard Stanton has worn since getting drilled in the face four years ago was absent.
But Stanton wasn’t trying to see how he felt without the guard. The explanation was pretty simple.
“I couldn’t find my helmet,” Stanton said afterward. “I have two helmets: One with the flap and one without it. It was sitting right in front of me in my locker, but I didn’t see it.”
The face guard is about the only change Stanton made since coming back from the frightening 2014 incident, when Mike Fiers hit Stanton in the face with an 88-mph fastball, ending Stanton’s season that Sept. 11.
Stanton returned the next year and insisted his approach wasn’t altered.
“It wasn’t hard,’’ Stanton said of not being affected mentally by the beaning or adjusting to the flap.
“It was tough physically recovering, but it wasn’t tough to get back in the box,’’ Stanton said. “I told myself, ‘I’ve got 12 or 13 more years of playing and you can’t go around scared for 13 years.’ You’re not gonna be very productive that way.”
Stanton was in the midst of another All-Star season in 2015 when his campaign was cut short again when he broke a bone in his left wrist, again being hit by a pitch.
He missed time again in 2016 because of a hamstring injury, before finally playing a full sea- son again last year, when he led the majors with 59 homers and was named the National League MVP before being traded to the Yankees in December.
Stanton’s recovery and comeback was a relief to Fiers, who’s now with the Tigers.
“You don’t want to harm anyone’s career,” Fiers said in Port St. Lucie last week after pitching against the Mets. “You don’t want to injure anybody. You try to move on from it and I’m glad he’s all right and playing well.”
The two faced each other in a spring-training game a year ago, with Fiers on the Astros and Stanton with Miami, and they could meet again this season now that both are in the American League. “Those things happen,” Fiers said of the pitch that got away. “It’s baseball. We took care of it a long time ago. I’ve got to pitch and not worry about who’s in the box.
“Of course it was scary for me, too, but I’ve got to be aggressive and pitch inside. If one gets away and hits him again, it might. Against a hitter like that, you’ve always got to attack.”
Stanton, who hit his first homer of the spring — and as a Yankee — on Saturday, didn’t travel to face his old team in Jupiter, Fla., on Sunday.
Manager Aaron Boone and Stanton said it was just a normal day off and his absence was not related to them keeping him away from the Marlins.
He’s expected to be back in the lineup on Monday night, when the Yankees host the Twins at George M. Steinbrenner Field as Stanton looks to get into the form that allowed him to win his first MVP last season.
“You need to have the mental strength to overcome a situation like that or you’re gonna fail,” Stanton said. “And I think failing is scarier than going up there worried every at-bat that you’re going to get hit again. So that’s the philosophy I have now. And you have to have it. There’s no other option. Period.”
JUPITER, Fla. — Jordan Montgomery responded to his coronation by losing his balance en route to the throne.
To be precise, it was more his tempo than his balance.
“I’m just kind of in between tempos right now, working fast and working slow,” Montgomery said Sunday, after taking the loss in the Yankees’ 7-5 defeat to Derek Jeter’s Marlins at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. “… [I’ll] watch some tape from my first outing and get back to work.”
Following his first three Grapefruit League outings, during which he allowed one run over 8 2/3 innings, manager Aaron Boone made the unsurprising announcement that Montgomery, who clocked an excellent rookie season in 2017, would be the team’s fifth starter. In his first start since that announcement, the 25-year-old got hammered by the Marlins for four runs, five hits and two walks in 2 ¹/3 innings, striking out three.
That lack of tempo, Boone asserted, spoke to Montgomery’s inability to throw his secondary pitches effectively.
“That ability, 1-0, 2-1, whatever it is, to be able to throw his changeup, to be able to flip a breaking ball in there for a strike, that’s the tempo thing he’s talking about,” Boone said. “The swing-and-miss stuff is still there when he’s ahead, but being able to get back on count with the secondary [pitches] is where he needs to improve.”
Tyler Wade’s left wrist is “good to go,” Boone said, after Wade suffered a scare there in Saturday’s game against the Mets. The Yankees plan to have him in the lineup Monday night against the Twins.
Jacoby Ellsbury (oblique) was supposed to do soft toss and tee work Sunday, Boone said. In the next couple of days, the Yankees hope to map out a plan to return the outfielder to action.