New York Yankees: Stay away from the hype regarding Giancarlo Stanton

The New York Yankees must be careful of all of the extra hype that will be accompanying the arrival of Giancarlo Stanton.

The New York Yankees are once again the talk of the baseball world. Why shouldn’t they be? After all, they have acquired the prize of the offseason in Giancarlo Stanton. Yes, the Giancarlo Stanton that led the majors with 59 home runs and 132 RBI. The one that routinely hit shots into the hallway during the Home Run Derby. He joins a lineup that already includes some guy named Aaron Judge. We all know what he is about, don’t we?

With a move like that, however, comes all of the hype. All of the talk is about how stacked this lineup is now. There is already plenty of talk, comparing Stanton and Judge to Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. By the time the new season rolls around, the hype will even go further than that. The Yankees will be likely expected to dominate without much competition at all. That’s the type of thing that happens when you bring big stars into a town that expects big things.

Things get a little crazy when press clippings come into play. Often times, players and teams begin to believe their own press. What happens then? They underachieve. The Yankees must avoid becoming victims of their own hype. If they don’t, the promising signs of 2017 will disappear in 2018.

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First, do not just assume that these two players, Judge and Stanton, are going to perform as well as they did in 2017. In Stanton’s case, remember that players play to their career averages. Take out last season and Stanton averaged just under 30 home runs per season. I am not saying that is bad, I am just saying that is not 59.

The odds are simply greater that he will come back down towards his career numbers in 2018.

In Judge’s case we don’t have a long career to make comparisons to. We look at last year. He hit 52 home runs but also led the league in strikeouts. He struck out in over 38% of his official times at bat. That’s a lot.

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There is now a book out there on Aaron Judge. There is plenty of tape. Teams and pitchers are going to learn more and more about how to get Aaron Judge out. To expect him to be as good as he was in 2017 isn’t realistic.

This is not to say the Yankees will not be good. Hardly. The team has the potential to be really good. They just have to keep from believing their press. If they don’t, it could end very badly.

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