Bad news for the Miami Marlins, and bad news for baseball fans in general. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton has a broken bone in his hand, an injury that is expected to knock him out for four to six weeks.
Stanton suffered the injury in Friday’s 7-1 loss to the Dodgers. During his final at-bat, Stanton struck out versus Pedro Baez and was in noticeable pain after swinging and missing, favoring his left hand. Here is video of the play.
“On the swing, my bat dug into my hand a little bit, and it didn’t feel the greatest,” Stanton told reporters after the game. “We’ll just get it checked out and know for sure what’s going on.”
The outfielder added that he felt pain in his left hand in an earlier plate appearance, and the discomfort increased as the game progressed. It’s not a stretch to speculate that was a factor in him striking out in his final three at-bats of the game. According to reports, Stanton’s hand was sore afterwards and he underwent X-rays on Saturday.
This is obviously a devastating blow to whatever narrow playoff hopes the Marlins were clinging to. One week ago, Miami was 6.5 games behind the Nationals in the NL East. But after losing five in a row and eight of their past nine games, the Marlins are currently 30-45, placing them fourth in the NL East, 11.5 games out of first place. Their chances in the wild-card race aren’t much better, facing a 10.5-game deficit.
But the team was looking to get a significant boost with Jose Fernandez set to return from Tommy John surgery next week. The 22-year-old phenom is making his final rehab start on Saturday and was set to rejoin the Marlins rotation on July 2. Fernandez’s return may not have been enough to put Miami back in contention, but with the Mets and Braves sliding, adding a Cy Young-caliber starter (if he can regain that form quickly) to what’s been an average rotation would have helped.
Instead, Stanton’s injury surely flatlines the faint pulse the Marlins’ playoff chances were carrying. And with that, speculation has begun over whether or not the team will be sellers at the trade deadline. Trading away older veterans might be a tough sell to a fanbase still looking for reasons to believe in a two-faced ownership, but people surely understand that without Stanton, this team isn’t contending. So try to clear some payroll, get some potentially helpful young talent and build around the young core of talent that will still be intact and should be even better after another season of experience and time to get healthy.
Pitchers Dan Haren and Mat Latos would appear to be the most likely to go at the trade deadline. As the New York Post‘s Joel Sherman points out, Haren never really wanted to play for the Marlins (or more specifically, leave Southern California), so a return to the West Coast seems entirely possible. Perhaps Martin Prado, Michael Morse and Ichiro Suzuki could also draw some interest from contenders looking to add some offense. Will any of those players yield top prospects in a trade? Probably not, but getting players that can eventually contribute or be used in other trades is certainly possible.
In the meantime, baseball fans are deprived of watching Stanton’s majestic home runs on a nightly basis. MLB Network highlights, MLB.com video clips and The Outside Corner’s weekly tabulation of the week’s longest homers will all suffer from Stanton’s absence. Not having him as part of the All-Star Game (and possibly the Home Run Derby) certainly diminishes those events, as a showcase event would benefit from the presence of one of the sport’s brightest young stars.
Everyone loses here. Stanton’s injury is truly a bad break for baseball, especially during a time when the game has the sporting world’s headlines largely to itself. The summer will be less fun without the appointment viewing of a Stanton at-bat every night and the awe that comes with watching one of his bazooka shots soar deep past outfield fences throughout MLB. Murmurs that Stanton can’t stay healthy may also rumble again, less than a year after he signed a gargantuan $325 million contract. Hopefully, he can return sooner, rather than later.
