From Joel Sherman:
Giancarlo Stanton going down over the weekend with yet another leg injury merely corroborated the already verified — the Yankees are going to be spending most of this decade working around Stanton. With their roster structurally, and their payroll financially.
This is three years in three as a Yankee in which Stanton has incurred lower-half maladies. And these are prime years, ages 28-30. He is signed through 2027 and age 37. In 2020, he could not stay healthy in a shortened season in which he was exclusively a designated hitter and further reconfigured his body to avoid such breakdowns. This is the lamp breaking despite being in bubble wrap, swathed in blankets and handled with care.
This time it was a left hamstring strain. In 2018, Stanton played through a hamstring injury, persevering as others went down around him. He could not manage that last season amid the Yankee record spree of IL stints, landing on that list in April 2019 with a biceps strain and in June with a right knee sprain. He played through a calf injury in last year’s postseason that was still problematic enough that he almost certainly would have begun this year on the IL had the season opened as scheduled in March.
It began, instead, in late July, and by the second week of August, Stanton — first year in his 30s — is hurt again. He has seven seasons at $218 million left beyond 2020, which by itself would be the 16th-largest contract ever behind — among others — the 13-year, $325 million pact Stanton originally signed with the Marlins.