BOSTON — Giancarlo Stanton is not only lugging the largest contract in major league history, but comparisons that will be inescapable — unless he escapes them.
The Yankees ignored Justin Verlander during the 2017 season because, yes, they thought he was down from his peak, but also because they did not see shoehorning his 2018-19 salaries into their planned sub-$197 million luxury-tax threshold payroll this season.
Houston landed Verlander as August 2017 ended and he proved seminal in eliminating the Yankees in the ALCS and winning the Astros’ first-ever title. His dominance Friday afternoon in Division Series Game 1 against the Indians hints more of the same is possible.
Plus with what the Tigers were willing to pay down to facilitate the trade, Verlander cost $20 million for 2018 — or $2 million less than what Stanton costs the Yankees this season for luxury-tax purposes. You know who else costs $22 million for tax purposes? J.D. Martinez, who inked a five-year, $110 million free-agent contract last offseason, a few months after the Yankees landed Stanton.
Verlander might win another Cy Young and Martinez has been in the MVP discussion. Stanton was good in his maiden Yankees season — but not in that award kind of way.
He could make that narrative all vanish with a big postseason. But in his first taste of Yankees-Red Sox playoff intensity, he lost his matchup against Martinez and the Yankees, not coincidentally, lost Division Series Game 1.
Martinez hit a three-run homer in the first to put Boston ahead to stay. Stanton struck out with the bases loaded in the sixth and again on three pitches as the tying run in the ninth against Craig Kimbrel, his fourth whiff of the game. That helped a wobbled Red Sox bullpen survive in a 5-4 triumph.
“I had pitches to hit in the zone,” Stanton said. “I fouled them off and didn’t get to them. You can’t give away strikes in the zone or else you wind up having a game like I did.”
Game 1 had a chance to be a 2004 ALCS microcosm, just in reverse, with Boston dominating early before collapsing against the Yankees.
Chris Sale, who had two DL stints and just 17 innings since the outset of August, eradicated concerns about his health by throwing hard and with dominance over the first five innings. Aaron Hicks, who had the two best plate appearances against Sale to that point, had to be removed in the fourth with a tight right hamstring.
J.A. Happ’s excellence against the Red Sox and in Fenway did not extend to October. He surrendered a homer to Martinez and never got an out in the third, his performance not all that dissimilar to the Kevin Brown disaster in 2004 ALCS Game 7 — the last game these rivals had played against one another in the playoffs before Friday.
But Sale left with two on and one out in the sixth and the concerns expressed about how the Red Sox would get from a starter to Kimbrel were real. The Yanks scored twice in the sixth, helped by a Stanton single, to close to 5-2 and loaded the bases, but Brandon Workman struck out Gleyber Torres.
The Yanks loaded the bases anew in the seventh with none out. Dread was palpable at Fenway. Stanton had a chance to deliver the kind of blow that could alter a series — and a narrative. In the wild-card game, he hit the hardest playoff homer since the tracking began in 2015.
But that produced a pile-on run in a 7-2 win.
This was a grander scale. To win this Game 1 matchup against Martinez and win a game for the Yankees. Even a sac fly would have extended a positive vibe, but Stanton waved at a Matt Barnes curve, flunking center stage.
“Any of those guys get the big blow, it doesn’t matter who it is,” Stanton said in dismissing that answering Martinez, in particular, would be precious.
Look, Stanton was not alone in bringing this defeat. Happ was a bigger culprit. Boston manager Alex Cora said perhaps the biggest key of this series was keeping the homer-record-setting Yankees in the park, and they had nine hits — all singles — until Aaron Judge went deep off Kimbrel to open the ninth.
But Stanton, like Alex Rodriguez in his first Yankee season in 2004, arrived as an MVP with the largest contract in history. When the Yanks fell apart against the Red Sox in that ALCS there were many co-conspirators. But A-Rod received the worst of it — such is the responsibility that comes with money and arriving to be the difference-maker on a win-now team.
A-Rod tended to compound his problems by over-stressing and overthinking situations. Both Brian Cashman and hitting coach Marcus Thames insisted Stanton was good at dispatching one day — good or bad — to focus on the next.
“He is not wired that way,” Cashman said. “He does not complicate things.”
He needs to move on, but also to move up into the Verlander class and now the Martinez group.
Stanton had his biggest at-bats to date as a Yankee end in a few more strikeouts. He lost his heavyweight matchup against Martinez and the Yankees lost a game.
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