Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton brings a healthy dose of optimism to spring training
Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton at spring training at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Feb. 17 in Tampa, Fla. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
TAMPA, Fla. — Giancarlo Stanton looked just fine in his spring training debut.
Most important, he felt fine afterward.
Chipper, in fact.
The veteran DH, who could not swing a bat a year ago at this time because of tendinitis in both elbows, an ailment that kept him out of the lineup until mid-June, went 1-for-2 with a walk in the Yankees’ 11-1 victory over Team Panama on Tuesday at Steinbrenner Field.
The hit was a 114.3-mph bullet to leftfield leading off the fourth inning. He struck out in his first at-bat in the first inning and walked in his third plate appearance, in the fifth.
“A little bit of everything,” Stanton said afterward. “Scored, tagged up, ran the bases. A nice prototype first day I’d say.”
Stanton, who routinely ranks in the top 10 in terms of exit velocity every year — he had the sixth hardest-hit ball of the season in 2025 at 118.0 mph, according to BaseballSavant.com — said he wasn’t so much concerned Tuesday with that number.
“Just squaring up a heater tells me where I’m at more than miles per hour,” Stanton said of the 94-mph sinker from righthander Erian Rodriguez he yanked to left on a 1-and-0 count. “Pulling a heater . . . it’s good. Good timing, good adjustments from a couple of swing-throughs or foul-offs of heaters from at-bats 1 and 3.”
The reality, of course, for the 36-year-old Stanton, a player plagued by injury for much of his Yankees career, is that none of the numbers he puts up in the spring are relevant other than games played and at-bats taken.
A somewhat nonsensical story went viral late last week that mentioned, among other things, that Stanton’s elbow pain has been so intense that he “can’t open a bag of chips.”
Clickbait artistry that it was, unemphasized was the fact Stanton’s spring has been 180 degrees different than a year ago when he could barely lift a bat, let alone swing one. His daily workout regimen last spring mostly consisted of physical conditioning.
This year, the 6-5, 245-pound Stanton arrived in camp “ready to roll,” in manager Aaron Boone’s words, and has been able to go through all of his prescribed daily work. That routine includes extensive work in the indoor cages (Stanton for years has done the majority of his swing work indoors, the case during the regular season as well), and plenty of live batting practice sessions.
None of Stanton’s workload this spring has been curtailed, and he made his spring debut as scheduled on Tuesday (he’s slated to be back at DH in Thursday’s home game against the Twins).
“It’s nothing new. We’ve been seeing it all spring,” lefthander Max Fried, who made his spring debut on Tuesday and allowed one hit, three walks and struck out a batter over three innings, said of Stanton’s missile single. “He’s been hitting the ball hard all spring. He looks great.”
After Tuesday’s game, Boone said the plan is for Stanton to play in “most” of the remaining home games, which would give the veteran some 30-35 at-bats before the start of the regular season.
“I thought he had some good swings,” Boone said. “I thought even] in the strikeout at-bat, I thought he looked good, he was on time for things. Good day, good to get him three at-bats there.”
On Day 1 of spring training 2025, Stanton disclosed the tendinitis (tennis elbow) he reported to camp with was a condition he dealt with for much of the second half of the 2024 season, including in the playoffs when he was the ALCS MVP against Cleveland.
He said last spring dealing with the discomfort in his elbows would be a matter of “pain tolerance,” likely for the rest of his career.
After being activated June 16, Stanton hit .273 with 24 homers and a .944 OPS in 77 games.
He hit throughout the offseason, though not quite as much as in recent years, and came to Tampa in a far better place than in 2025.
“Different entirely,” Stanton said in comparing this spring to last. “It’s good that I could have a normal spring where it’s like, I have a game, what did I like? What didn’t I like? OK, then go immediately to make the adjustments or save it for tomorrow or a day off, and you know exactly what you’re going to do and see if that work carries over to the next day. So you’re like, practice, work, practice, work. Was it efficient? If not, change it. You’ve got until the season opener March 25]. That’s good.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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