It's Been A Nightmare Start For Giancarlo Stanton

Bottom of the 12th, Yankees down 8-7 to the Orioles, bases loaded, nobody out, and Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton coming up. If you’re going to be down a run, this is the situation you want, right? Here’s what O’s closer Brad Brach did:

Brach got Judge to ground back to the mound for a double play, and then struck out Stanton swinging. The GIDP was the killer, but go to the 55-second mark of the video to hear who Yankees fans felt was the real disappointment.

Yes, Giancarlo Stanton was booed mercilessly, again, after he struck out five times in a game, again. He told reporters the reaction was about what he figured. “They’re not going to cheer for that. What do you expect?”

It was a brutal long weekend for the Yankees, who dropped three of four and, as the , “lost nearly as many games to the Orioles as they did players to the disabled list.” There are plenty of goats: they squandered a 5-0 lead; the vaunted bullpen has had a rough beginning to the season; nobody but Didi Gregorius is hitting; everyone is hurt— look at yesterday’s lineup, with Neil Walker hitting cleanup, it’s an abomination.

And yet no one else on the roster is taking the heat like Stanton is. But, then, no one else came in with such high expectations, or with a $25 million salary.

Through 10 games, Stanton is hitting .167, with three home runs (two of them on opening day) and 20 strikeouts in 42 at-bats. And with his second platinum sombrero of the homestand, he made a little bad baseball history.

After his 0-for-7 afternoon in which he stranded nine runners—at one point the Orioles walked the batter in front of him to get to Stanton, something he didn’t think had ever happened in the big leagues—Stanton was sanguine about what, after all, was just 10 games in a long season.

“Things aren’t going well,” he said. “You’ve just got to look at it as a bad week. The season’s much longer than a week. A couple good games and I can turn it around and help us win.”

Stanton said he planned to spend Monday’s off-day working on his swing, before the Yankees take on the red-hot Red Sox. It might be a mercy for Stanton that the series is in Boston.