In contrast, despite some of its ludicrous policies and fundamentally flawed hierarchy of decision-makers from the NFL office, which has rightfully been exploited in the news over the past week with the Ray Rice and Greg Hardy domestic violence incidents and the NFL's really poor handling of the cases thanks to the always incompetent Roger Goodell, people are still craving their football every week because the sport has never been more popular amongst its fans (they play games now on Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays because people can't get enough). Fantasy football is such a big draw for the borderline league watchers because they are now dialed in on every game to see how their players are performing. Furthermore, as painful as it is to sometimes watch games where every time a defensive player touches a wide receiver it is a flag, people love to see offense and points. The fact that the league average per team for points per game last year was 23.4, the highest ever in a single-season, only draws more people into each and every back-and-forth contest. With the NFL rules constituted in such a way that the offensive side of the ball is so heavily favored with holding, pass interference, and personal foul penalties, no lead in a game is truly safe because of just how quickly offensives can rack up points (Andrew Luck led 8 fourth quarter comebacks in just his first two years in the league alone).
Even basketball, a sport many people honestly maintained was saved from the depths of the sporting world just 35 years ago by the enthralling rivalry between Magic Johnson and his Lakers and Larry Bird and his Celtics (one of which was in the NBA Finals every year in the 1980's) has caught up to baseball, and possibly surpassed the game, in terms of its popularity and truly devoted fan-base. Additionally, the NBA has more global ties than any other American sport even despite the fact that their game in Mexico City got cancelled last season because of a fire in the generator room (there are technological issues at places outside of the Superdome too folks), as basketball has substantial roots in China and throughout a very prosperous Asian market. It also helps your game when you can boast a lineup of LeBron James, arguably the greatest player in the game that we have ever seen aside from Jordan, Kevin Durant, who is with guys like Jordan, Kobe, and Wiklins as the best pure scorer in NBA history, the emerging Anthony Davis and possibly Andre Drummond, the deadly three-point shooting combination of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in Golden State, the equally lethal combinations in LA of Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, Portland with Lillard and Aldridge, and Houston with Dwight and Harden (and their role players who Harden doesn't really recognize), and hopefully a resurgent Derrick Rose and Paul George when they can both return from serious knee injuries (Rose this year and George next season).
Aside from the obvious issue of baseball games just taking way too much time in between pitches when batters are adjusting their gloves, stepping out of the box, and calling time, and pitchers like Matt Garza and Clay Buchholz aimlessly standing on the mound for 20 to 30 seconds, not everybody can be Mark Buehrle I guess, the MLB just doesn't have the star power that it once did in the game. (I'm not sure baseball games take too long because football games are now going on for 4 hours, but there is just way too much dead time where nothing is happening on the field. I don't mean to be a contrarian, but soccer games have 80 minutes of constant, fast-paced action along with 10 minutes of players rolling around in deep pain over a touch of their body, guys arguing with the referees and other coaches if its Diego Simeone, and having wild over-the-top goal celebrations while baseball games are just much too slow moving after each and every pitch). In decades past, a majority of the sporting world's biggest stars and attractions came from baseball rather than football, basketball, major college sports, or hockey and while these are all obviously team sports, they do rely on star power to captivate many interested fans.
After the dead ball era, the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's had baseball icons and legends like Ruth, Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, and Bob Feller, who seem so amazing with their above .400 batting averages and 60 home run seasons in a time when everybody else was hitting in the 20's or 30's, that they are almost mystical or made up. The 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's brought to the world the likes of bigger than life personalities and stars from Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Warren Spahn, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Frank Robinson, and Bob Gibson to Juan Marichal, Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, and Jim Palmer. If you were walking down the street, you would instantly know if you saw Hank Aaron or Pete Rose, but nowadays, if you were sitting right next to some of the games top players like Josh Donaldson, Corey Kluber, or Chris Sale, it may not strike you right away that they are biggest names in baseball because the sport just doesn't have that same familiarity and big star presence that it once did. In the 1980's and 1990's, if George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr., or Mike Schmidt came to the plate or Nolan Ryan or Greg Maddux came to the mound, you would stop what you were doing and watch them at work. In baseball today, Edwin Encarnacion and Adam Jones are two of the best hitters in the game, but nobody is going to completely forget everything around them and take in their at-bat. In the past, the best athletes and the biggest names all came from the baseball diamond, but that is just no longer the case.
Baseball has been in this waiting period/limbo over the past several years about some of the guys that would step up and be their biggest stars to infatuate fans to the point where they needed to come to the ballpark to see them play or keep a chuck of their day open to watching them on television. Derek Jeter has been the face of baseball for such a long time, but with his impending retirement, the game is in need of some fresh superstars across the sport. Some pitchers have filled that void like Clayton Kershaw, based off the pure fact that his 1.67 ERA through September is just plain scary, especially after he posted a seemingly absurd but now less ridiculous 1.83 ERA last season, as well as Felix Hernandez with his King's Court in Seattle, but guys who only throw once out of every five days are hard to promote your entire sport around (come to the ballpark once every week to catch Kershaw is not exactly what you are looking for despite the amount of pull that has on an exclusive day when they are on the mound). We thought that Jason Hayward, Hanley Ramirez, a young Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Domonic Brown, Jesus Montero, or Justin Upton may be the next group of young stars, but they have all struggled much more than expected with all their collective talent. Clearly, there has been some more clarity over the past two years around the guys baseball fans would gravitate towards with star players emerging like Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, and Yasiel Puig. However, there was still some disconnect in the game, and that was the big-time power guy that everybody was missing out on and so desperate to see back in the sport.
In the interim, there is no way of disputing that the steroid era was good for the overall landscape of baseball. Following some rough times in the early 1990's with the MLB strike-shortened season in 1994, the first year that didn't feature a World Series in America since 1904 - they played the World Series in the middle of World War I and II, so that shows you how disconcerting that strike must have been to the game - baseball needed a quick restoration and revival, and performance-enhancing drugs, as much as I am against players using them to gain an unfair competitive advantage and changing the entire dynamic of the sport, provided that for baseball. Offense was at a never before seen level with runs, hits, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage going at all-time high rates, and the home run battles between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999 were unlike anything that baseball had ever seen before in terms of following and interest amongst fans. However, the short-term gains of the steroid era came at the peril of the long-term growth of the sport, and not just in terms of every story over the last ten years involving baseball being about A-Rod or Ryan Braun getting caught for using performance-enhancing drugs. Actually, more precisely in the case of Braun, getting caught, lying about not using the drugs, getting off on a minuscule technicality while ruining the reputation of another person, and then getting caught again, which is basically the Lance Armstrong in a nutshell. However, what the steroid era also did is that it inflated run scoring and home run numbers to a ridiculous degree, where teams and players now have a nearly impossible task of matching or even coming near the offensive numbers of a generation in which so many players were juicing. People became so accustomed to seeing a lot of runs scored and multiple long balls every game that they are disappointed that today's baseball has so little of that going on with pitchers being much more dominant than ever before. For example, in 2000 when Jason Giambi was knocking out 43 home runs like it was nothing, there were 1.172 home runs per game and 10.280 runs per contest, and in 2011 those number were all the way down to 0.937 home runs per contest and 8.567 runs per game, the lowest for a single-season since all the way back in 1993 and 1992 for those two categories respectively, which were both before the steroid era really kicked off. In an era of baseball when the Richie Sexson's of the world are no longer hitting 45 homers in a season, the MLB was looking for somebody to take up the reins of the game's next best power hitter and real big slugger.
Insert the monster that baseball has so desperately needed in Giancarlo Stanton. If you just look at the 6-6, 240 pound frame of the jacked Stanton, he is about as intimidating and striking as any baseball player you will ever see because he doesn't even need a wooden bat to look imposing. Some questions in life are very difficult to answer such as should we cut government spending, does nature or nurture determine our make-up, or is the NFL a corrupt business just looking to cover their own backs all the time (that one is actually easy to answer), but there is no question who is the most powerful hitter in baseball because that title goes easily to Giancarlo Stanton. Nothing against guys like Nelson Cruz, Miguel Cabrera, Jose Abreu, Jose Bautista, David Ortiz, Paul Goldschmidt, and Jay Bruce, but Giancarlo's swing has the most pure power since a younger Albert Pujols or Mike Schmidt. Watching the 2014 Home Run Derby, I have never been more impressed with a guy that would go on to not hit a single home run in one of his later rounds because some of Stanton's bombs in the first round just came off his bat like a missile. His natural power is one of those things where you just can't help but stare and watch because the ball just cannons off his bat anytime he gets a hold of a pitch in or even out of the strike zone. You just have to watch some of his home runs that Stanton has roped this season off pitchers, many of which are just line drive bullets that leave the ball park in mere seconds before you can think about anything, to truly comprehend the raw power that this guy possess in his bat. Here is Giancarlo's 484-foot shot against poor Eric Stults of the San Diego Padres, the longest ever in the three years of Marlins Park. Here is another Stanton mash, this time against Jonathan Pettibone of the Philadelphia Phillies, which went 470-feet and made Sergio Ramos's penalty kick look like it didn't go that far. Here is Giancarlo just reaching out to right field and knocking a pitch out of the ball park like he was just trying to tap it into fair territory off of Jason Hammel when he was still with the Cubs. At this point, I'm so enamored by Stanton's unreal and almost superhuman power that I'm just going to link all his home runs from 2012, 2013, and the first half of this year with some Fall Out Boy music in the background to satisfy everybody. His ability to just shoot through the ball and power through anything on the inner or outer half with his quick hip turn and torque is just incredible and unmatched right now in the baseball world.
Some of the power numbers that Stanton has put up over the past five years, at just the current age of 24, is staggering to say the least, especially considering that he still has time to mature as he enters his prime major league years in his late 20's and early 30's. Since 2010, Stanton's 154 home runs are the most in the National League and only behind Jose Bautista and Miguel Cabrera among all batters in baseball over that time span (Stanton was not called up until mid-June of his rookie season, so he could be averaging even more than his 30 home run per season rate over the past 5 years if he came up from triple-A New Orleans Zephyrs, one of the best minor league baseball team names along with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, Toledo Mud Hens, and the Albuquerque Isotopes, a little earlier). His isolated power of .269 since 2010 is once again the best in the NL and only behind Joey Bats over the last five seasons in the majors (Stanton's .318 isolated power in 2012 was the 3rd best in a single-season in the MLB over the past seven years behind only Bautista in 2010 and Pujols in 2009 with a minimum of 500 plate appearances). Giancarlo's .549 slugging percentage since 2011 is only bettered by Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki in the NL, who has 548 less plate appearances than Stanton over that span, and David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera in the AL. Stanton is also on his way to leading the National League in slugging for the second time in three seasons, which only Johnny Mize (1938-1940), Stan Musial (1943-1944, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952), Ralph Kiner (1947, 1949, 1951), Willie Mays (1954-1955, 1957; 1964-1965), Frank Robinson (1960-1962), Willie McCovey (1968-1970), Mike Schmidt (1980-1982), Dale Murphy (1983-1984), Barry Bonds (1990, 1992-1993; 2001-2004), Larry Walker (1997, 1999), and Albert Pujols (2008-2009) have done in the league in the last 80 years. Stanton's 25.0 home run to fly ball ratio is also the best in the majors since his debut in 2010, displaying the power and unprecedented strength that he has to get a quarter of his fly balls out of the ball park. After hitting 34 home runs in 2011 and popping 37 this season for Miami, Stanton joins just Mel Ott (1929, 1932), Eddie Mathews (1953-1956), Willie Mays (1954-1955), Frank Robinson (1956, 1959), Orlando Cepeda (1961-1962), Johnny Bench (1970, 1972), Vladimir Guerrero (1998-1999), Andruw Jones (2000-2001), Albert Pujols (2001-2004), Prince Fielder (2007-2008) as the only players to have two seasons with at least 34 home runs before the age of 25.
The first thing with Stanton that jumps out to you is undoubtedly his conspicuous power. He has that kind of truly remarkable and unrivaled force through the ball that it makes fans look upon him with awe, and opposing pitchers look upon him only with delight when they get to give him the free pass down to first base (his 24 intentional walks are the most in the NL), because of his unfair physical tools. Stanton, though, has evolved into a much more well rounded player than you would normally assume about a big, power-hitting slugger in the middle of a lineup that is there for power but not much else like a Jay Bruce, or a Chris Davis, or an Adam Dunn, who is on his way to becoming the worst ever 500-home hitter by a mile and a half and is going to awkwardly stand out more in that group than a father that doesn't know how to use twitter or an unknown Billy Campbell amongst the cast of The Rocketeer. While Stanton has his most power when he is pulling through the ball with his hips and driving the ball out to left field, his developing ability to hit the ball the other way has allowed him to get on base much more often than a typical slugger that hits a lot of home runs. The only players in the MLB this season with a batting average of .285 or above and at least 25 home runs are Victor Martinez (.333 batting average and 30 home runs), Jose Abreu (.317 batting average and 33 home runs), Jose Bautista (.286 batting average and 32 home runs), Adam Jones (.286 batting average and 25 home runs), Mike Trout (.285 batting average and 32 home runs), and of course Giancarlo (.288 batting average and 37 home runs). Even more impressive is the fact that Stanton has become much more patient at the plate and is really looking to zero in on pitches high in the strike zone and not chase off-speed stuff in the dirt, which has allowed him to go from an above average .350 to .360 on-base percentage guy to a .395 OBP batter this season, which is the 5th highest in the majors behind only Victor Martinez, Andrew McCutchen, Jose Bautista, and Paul Goldschmidt. It is also very helpful when you are so strong that you can hit righties, lefties, with runners in scoring position (.316 batting average with RISP in 2014), and just casually poke a ball out over the fence with ease. Stanton's defense could still improve out there in right field, but he does have an above average arm, and no team is going to complain about a solid defensive right fielder who just so happens to be having a year with an OPS of .950, 299 total bases, 105 runs batted in, and is leading the National League in virtually every offensive statistical category.
Despite all of his outstanding tools on the field, which are readily apparent to anybody that watches a single Marlins game, the real moment in which Stanton resonated with me and so many other fans were his comments about his Miami organization earlier this summer. Stanton said, "Five months [of good baseball with the Marlins playoff push this year] doesn't change five years [of losing season]... The way I felt last year, with the whole situation of losing and not play my best [he was still 4th in the NL in at-bats per home run], that was one of the worst feelings I ever had. I put it as a waste of time. I spent all that time in the offseason. To lose 100 games and to not do my best? It was like, 'What I do all that in the offseason for?'" At the same time, we're still not where we need to be to keep playing beyond the designed schedule... I want to be the only game on TV at the end of the day... That's still a long ways to go to be in the same conversation with the best of the best. I'm hungry for that." I don't think a fan or a front-office looking to build around a guy that will do anything to win could craft a much more perfect quote than that one from Stanton. So often in sports nowadays, we feel like the athletes are just going through the motions and making their money (Robinson Cano, for example, fielding a ground ball at second or running to first base looks like he is taking a leisurely stroll in the park and he is making 240 million dollars over the next 10 years in Seattle). Sports, after all, are a business, as so many people love to point out, and it is the way these athletes make a living, so I have no problem with them trying to make as much cash as they can attempt to do in their very short careers. With that being said, it just seems like in the sporting world today, some athletes do not live and die with the result on the field and it isn't a 'if I don't win this game, I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my life about it and it will stick with me forever, so I'm going to do absolutely after I can to win this game' kind of proposition (remember when Gronk was partying just hours after the Pats lost in the Super Bowl to the Giants in 2011-2012). Obviously, life is bigger than sports, but it is sometimes refreshing to hear an athlete that is fed up with losing, showing everybody that he deeply cares about the results on the field and will do anything to change them. The Marlins have not made the playoffs since they beat the Yankees in the World Series in 2003 and they have finished under .500 for four straight seasons. In light of that, to hear their franchise player want to be around people who want to win as badly as he does, is exactly the type of desire that you can only dream a guy with the physical tools of Stanton would have about his team.
However, so much changed for the worse on Thursday night for the entire baseball world in the middle of Stanton's unparalleled season for a player at just the age of 24, heck, for any player regardless of age or league. It was the top of the 5th inning between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Miami Marlins from Miller Park with the Brew Crew up 4-0 and Mike Fiers on the mound for Milwaukee. Fiers threw a strike that Stanton took on the first pitch and the count moved to 0-1 (don't worry, though, because Stanton has a .364 career batting average on pitches coming from a 0-1 count, so he was still really looking to hit). The next pitch then resulted in something so devastating that only a few players in baseball history like Tony Conigliaro, Kirby Puckett, and Dickie Thon can truly relate to the feeling of the guy at the plate. Jonathan Lucroy was setting up over the middle part of the plate when Fiers completely missed the spot and his pitch went wildly sailing inside right towards Stanton in the batters box. Giancarlo, who was totally unsuspecting anything on the inner half of the plate, squared around like he was about to swing and saw the ball flying right at his helmet and he went tumbling down to the ground real hard after the fastball nailed right off the center of his face around his mouth area. Giancarlo was down in a heap, and blood was pouring everywhere onto the field from the slugger's face. I'm not sure which of these were the most horrifying sight about that hit-by-pitch: Stanton's legs swarming on the ground in miserable pain after getting plunked and needing to be taken off by a stretcher, seeing all the blood just dripping from his face and the grounds crew actually needing to delay the game to clean all the blood from the plate area, or the terrible sound that the ball made when it struck Stanton's face, which was just so painfully loud that you knew right away that Stanton caught one really badly.
Stanton's scary hit-by-pitch video
Let's get this out of the way first: Fiers in absolutely no way, shape, or form was trying to intentionally hit Stanton. He had been pitching a very nice game up until the 5th inning with just spreading out 3 hits and striking-out 7 Marlins batters (Miami has struck out more than any other team aside from the Cubs this season), so there would be no reason for him to go after a guy and ruin one of the best starts he had put together all season long in Milwaukee. The Brewers were also absolutely desperate for a win after losing 16 of their last 20 games and going from a 2.5 lead over the Cardinals and a 7 game advantage over the Pirates in the NL Central to trailing the Cards by 4 games and even falling behind Pittsburgh by 1.5 games in the division. In other words, Fiers would not be foolish enough to recklessly put guys on base in such an important game for a slumping team in September that needs to gain back the significant ground that it lost with its huge losing streak in August. You can just see on the replay that Lucroy was setting up over the middle of the plate with his mitt low in the zone, so it is plain and simple that Fiers just missed his location and lost total control of the pitch, and it was hard for Stanton to see the ball with his unique over the top delivery. Furthermore, it is not like the Brewers or Marlins, two teams in different divisions that have not exactly both been competing for the NL playoff spots over the years (they have made the postseason a combined 6 times out of the last 67 opportunities), have some bad blood that Fiers was trying to heat up or resolve in baseball's odd unwritten rules (that being said, everybody in the league does have some sort of bad blood with the always fiery Carlos Gomez). As if all of that wasn't enough, Fiers was so distraught over nailing Stanton and causing him a bad looking injury, that he plunked the next Marlins batter on the first pitch of his at-bat, clearly still shaken up and in complete shock over what had just transpired with Stanton. He seemed very remorseful after the game as well, profusely apologizing to Stanton and the Marlins in his interviews with the media and over twitter (speaking of remorse, do you know who isn't remorseful or contrite, Roger Goodell). However, none of that takes away from the unfortunate fact that for anybody that enjoys watching the game of baseball, Stanton is likely going to be out for the duration of the season with some serious facial fractures and month injuries.
The frightening injury to Stanton could also not have come at a worse time for a team like the Marlins, a club that has been trending upwards and has gotten itself back into the National League playoff race against all the odds and their 47 million dollar opening day payroll, the second lowest in the MLB (quite ironically, the Phillies, who are in dead last in the NL East, are paying more money to Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee alone than the entire Marlins roster). Despite the Nationals running away with the division, mainly due to their stretch of 10 consecutive victories in August that included 5 walk-off wins, unlike the Rangers, Twins, Red Sox, Astros, White Sox, Rays, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Phillies, Padres, Reds, and Mets, Miami was still on the periphery of the hunt for October. Going into last night's contest at 71-73, Miami was 4.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates for the second wild card spot in the NL, which is certainly not an insurmountable margin with a little less than a month still to play in the season if the right things go your way and you start to get really hot with 9 games left against the abysmal Phillies and Mets (trust me, as a Red Sox fan I know about teams coming back from big deficits in the wild card). In large part because of Stanton's hitting, the Marlins were able to climb their way back from a 44-52 start to the season with a very solid stretch of 27-21 baseball since July 20th to put them in striking distance of a playoff spot. They did all that with a pitching staff of five guys that nobody has ever heard of after the season-ending injury to stud Jose Fernandez, who was coming off one of the best seasons ever for a rookie pitcher with a 2.19 ERA, 2.73 FIP, and 0.979 WHIP, and actually having to play Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Garrrett Jones everyday and watch them strike out over and over again. Stanton was one of just two players on Miami with at least 15 home runs and an offensive WAR of at least 3.0 along with center fielder Marcell Ozuna, so I don't think it's a stretch to say Miami's season is all about over with at this point.
We are entering a new age of baseball right now in a post-steriod era with pitchers dominating the game at their best rate since the 1970's when the MLB likely had their best ever iteration of hurlers with several all-time greats like Bob Gibson, Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Vida Blue, Bert Blyleven, Don Sutton, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Luis Tiant, Phil Nierko, Goose Gossage, and Dennis Eckersley (the league average ERA of 3.26 in 1972 is the second lowest behind only 1968 in the last 95 years of the category). Not too far behind, however, is 2014, where the 3.75 league average ERA to this point in the season is the lowest the MLB has seen in 22 years since 1992, the year that seven pitchers all had ERA's under 2.50 including Greg Maddux (2.18), Curt Schilling (2.35), and Roger Clemens (2.41). As if that wasn't enough, the K% (20.3%) along with the K/9 (7.72) and K/BB (2.65) rates are all respectively the highest they have ever been for a single-season in baseball history, the 3.76 FIP mark is the second lowest the majors has seen over the past 25 years, and hitters .247 batting average and pitchers 1.28 WHIP are the lowest they have been in 42 years since 1972. If those statistics didn't make it clear enough, the MLB needs guys like to Stanton to entertain everybody with their hitting prowess and big time power ability, which is becoming few and far between in this age of baseball.
All of those factors prompted Mike Redmond to say, "It was very scary. We're hoping he is going to be all right... It's devastating for us. Devastating. For his season to end like that, I mean, that's not good." But Redmond was wrong about that, however, because it is not just a devastating blow for the Miami Marlins, but it is a terrible loss for the entire sport of baseball, which was reliant on a guy like Stanton to take the reins as one of the MLB's next great stars. Now, Giancarlo is out for an extended period of time, and baseball loses one of its biggest names and driving forces behind getting people really invested in the game again. Without Stanton playing every day, it is like the NBA losing Durant or the NHL losing Crosby. As unfortunate as it is for the Marlins to lose their MVP star and likely fall out of the playoff picture, it is even worse for a sport like baseball that has been yearning for years for a transcendent power hitting star like Stanton to take shape. In echoing the words of Mike Redmond, 'It's devastating for the entire game' is what baseball leaders are probably saying right about now.
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