Aaron Boone Open to Using Giancarlo Stanton in Outfield After 2021 Success
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Expect to see Giancarlo Stanton using his glove again in 2022.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone acknowledged Thursday that occasionally putting the hulking slugger in the field gives New York added flexibility. Team’s will have 28-man, expanded rosters through May 1 after the lockout shortened spring training, but that won’t last forever, and the Yankees will benefit from Stanton venturing beyond the role of designated hitter.
He did that last season, starting 26 games in either left or right field. Stanton logged 199.2 innings defensively, his most since 2018, his first season in pinstripes. Stanton, 32, added four starts in left field during the playoffs.
Stanton exclusively DH-ed in 2020 and totaled less than 100 frames in the field in 2019. He played right field during the Yankees’ spring training game against the Phillies on Monday.
“It was successful last year,” Boone said. “Last year at this time, we were coming off two seasons where he lost a ton of time to injury. So there was that hesitancy or maybe reluctancy to push forward with it. But having the kind of year he did last year, feeling like he thrived not only performance-wise, but physically in the second half of the season by being out there in the field more, certainly his desire to do it, him coming in in good physical condition, and then just what it means for our team and kind of helping out everyone else, it's something I'm glad we have in play now.”
As Boone alluded to, Stanton did not return to the field until the second half last season. His first outfield appearance came on July 30. He slashed .297/.357/.609 with 19 homers and 51 RBI from that point until the end of the season, a 58-game span in total, and made one error.
Some might consider that offensive performance a coincidence, but Stanton insisted at the time that playing the outfield helps him at the plate.
“You always want to be your best in the box and feel like you’re in the best mind frame,” he said last August. “But that also means turning it off for a second and using that focus somewhere else. So yeah, being out there… it helps in some way.”
Stanton echoed those sentiments earlier this spring, stating, “I enjoyed it. It kept me moving around. It wasn’t the stop-start routine of DH-ing.”
Stanton added that he would like to be used in a “similar” way this season.
“A couple times a week is good,” he said of playing the outfield.
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