HOF in reach? Stanton stating case with torrid October showing

CLEVELAND -- Years ago, when Mike Stanton was newly rechristened “Giancarlo” and the Florida Marlins were newly rechristened “Miami,” the hulking 22-year-old who was just a few hundred games into his big-league tenure with that team sat right here at Progressive Field, in the visitor’s clubhouse, and was asked what kind of career he envisioned for himself.

“I want to be a hitter,” Stanton said that day in 2012. “I don’t want to do the whole .230 with 45 homers thing. I didn’t have year-round baseball growing up, so I didn’t learn how to hit. I just knew how to hit the ball hard.”

To many, that’s what Stanton is known as -- a dude who hits the ball hard. And in Game 4 of this American League Championship Series, that’s exactly what he did with yet another game-changing October blast.

The three runs driven in by Stanton’s towering, 404-foot, 105.7-mph fly ball to the bleachers off Cade Smith's four-seam fastball in the top of the sixth might not have stood as the go-ahead runs on another crazy night at Progressive Field, but it was certainly the biggest swing of the 8-6 triumph that has Stanton’s Yanks one win away from the World Series. And this from the same guy who had put the Yankees ahead -- before the bullpen blew it -- with a mammoth shot to center off Emmanuel Clase in Game 3.

To watch these titanic taters was to know that, yes, the now-34-year-old Stanton is hitting the ball hard as ever. But it’s that desire to be a great hitter -- and not merely a home-run hitter -- that put him in the position to do so on this elevated stage and against truly elite arms.

You don’t do that by just going up there swinging freely and hoping to run into one.

“I just try to get any bit of information I can, any bit of film, all the swings I need,” Stanton said. “I exhaust it. That's why I'm exhausted after these, and I enjoy that. I enjoy that grind. I need to.”

What’s not to enjoy about the way Stanton has performed this postseason? He’s slashing .300/.400/.767 in eight games. He’s hit four homers with two doubles, nine RBIs, five walks and five runs scored. He’s even swiped a base!

To watch this play out is to know that it’s time to think about Stanton not as a too-often-injured designated hitter who wasn’t as successful as many hoped in his bid to be Aaron Judge’s running mate.

It’s time to start thinking about him as a potential Hall of Famer.

That might sound crazy, given the narrative that has surrounded Stanton for much of his Yankee tenure. He came to the Bronx saying, “I feel sorry for the baseballs,” but we wound up feeling sorry for him. He’s had too many lower-half hindrances to count, reaching 500 plate appearances only twice in seven seasons in pinstripes. It’s why Yankees general manager Brian Cashman made a comment at last year’s General Managers Meetings that he has to plan on Stanton “getting hurt again, more likely than not, because it seems to be a part of his game.”

Cashman later tried to clarify that comment, but -- let’s face it -- he was right. Injuries, unfortunately, are a part of Stanton’s game, limiting him to 114 of them this year.

And yet, when you look at what Stanton has produced, when healthy, in the regular and postseasons, it’s starting to look like the kind of stuff you etch on a plaque.

Stanton was the NL home run champ (37) with the Fish in 2014 and finished second in the MVP voting that year. Three years later, he was the NL MVP. He hasn’t finished higher than 19th in the voting in the time since, but he has put himself just 71 homers shy of 500, which in the past has served as a ticket to Cooperstown for those not publicly connected to PEDs.

Taking a player’s production in the context of his era is important. And in the context of his era, Stanton has performed 36% better (a 136 OPS+) than the average hitter.

You know who else had a career OPS+ of 136? Ken Griffey Jr.

Obviously, Stanton is not Griffey in terms of the totality of his contributions, but that does provide a better understanding of his plate production.

And then there’s the postseason, which, for Stanton, is another level entirely.

There’s an argument to be made that postseason numbers should matter more than ever when considering a player’s Hall case, because the postseason is beefier than ever. With more and longer rounds, with more teams, and with, therefore, less emphasis on the regular season, the MLB calendar is oriented around October more than ever.

And nobody has owned October quite like Giancarlo Stanton.

Stanton has now gone deep 15 times and driven in 33 runs in 35 career postseason games. On a per-game basis, he is the most prolific home run hitter in the history of the postseason, surpassing Babe Ruth (15 in 41 games). If you extrapolated Stanton’s playoff production over the course of a 162-game season, he’d have 67 homers and 143 RBIs.

“I believe that when the big moments are there and he’s focused, he’s as good as anybody out there,” said Eduardo Pérez, who is part of ESPN Radio’s crew for this ALCS and was Stanton’s hitting coach in Miami in 2011-12. “He’s always been able to hit elite pitching. And when the postseason comes around, it’s about elite pitching. That’s why he’s able to harness and focus.”

In the booth, Pérez said he is more focused on Stanton’s takes than his swings.

“His takes,” Pérez said, “are what keeps him on time.”

Stanton took a called first strike in the sixth, and 0-1 is a dangerous place to be against Smith, who came into this game having struck out 15 of the 30 batters he had faced in the postseason. After swinging through strike two, Stanton watched ball one, and then blasted Smith’s 94.2-mph four-seamer in the upper-third of the zone.

The previous night, Stanton fouled off a Clase slider and three cutters before getting and ripping an 89.5-mph slider in the lower third.

These are at-bats that would not have happened for Stanton early in his career, when he was more of a mistake hitter. The Marlins had a machine in the indoor batting cage that would spit out spin, and Stanton would stand in the box and face scuffed balls that would move laterally away from him. For every 100 pitches, probably 80 would be out of the zone, and the drill had the intention of teaching Stanton how to read them, how to adjust to the mystifying movement that was only beginning to overtake MLB.

“He had never seen spin at the high school level,” Pérez said. “He couldn’t recognize it.”

He’s recognizing it now. And we all ought to recognize that this is a special player at the top of his game in the games that matter most.

Maybe that doesn’t get Giancarlo Stanton to the Hall of Fame. But it’s getting him closer to a case than those who only think of him as an injury-prone homer hitter might realize.

For now, Stanton has a different goal.

“I want a ring,” he said.

That’s another thing that would look good on a plaque.