Yankees' Cashman: Giancarlo Stanton Likely Gets Injured in 2024, 'Part of His Game'

Giancarlo Stanton has missed 50 or more games in three of his six seasons with the New York Yankees and has missed at least 20 games in five straight seasons.

So at this point, the organization is resigned to him inevitably missing time in 2024.

"We try to limit the time he's down," general manager Brian Cashman told Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News on Monday. "But I'm not gonna tell you he's gonna play every game next year because he's not. He's going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game. But I know that when he's right and healthy—other than this past year—the guy's a great hitter and has been for a long time."

In years past, Stanton still terrorized pitching when healthy. He missed 23 games in 2021 but blasted 35 home runs with 97 RBI and a .870 OPS. In 2022 he missed 52 games but managed to homer 31 times.

The 2023 season was rough, however. Across 101 games Stanton hit just .191 with 24 homers, 60 RBI, 43 runs, a brutal .275 on-base percentage and a .695 OPS. His batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage (.420) and OPS were all career-worst marks.

It was a concerning turn of events for a player who still has four years and $118 million left on his contract—the Yankees owe him $98 million of that, while the Miami Marlins will pick up a $30 million tab—alongside a 2028 club option for $25 million that the organization will almost assuredly decline.

So if 2023 was the beginning of a trend for Stanton and not simply a down year, that contract is going to be brutal for the Yankees in the coming years. And given that Stanton is now 34 years old and has struggled to consistently stay on the field during his New York tenure, fears of a downward trend are even more understandable.

"We've gotta get Stanton up and running again," Cashman noted on Monday. "He's injury-prone. We all have lived and known that, but he's never not hit when he's playing, and this year is the first time that that's happened."

Stanton, to his credit, has publicly stated that he knows he needs to be better.

"There'll be a lot of changes," he told reporters after the season ended. "I've talked about how bad the year has been, so not much more to touch on that. But there will be a lot in the lab in the offseason."

He added that he would be watching "a lot of film" and trying to develop a "good game plan for next year."

But a new approach at the plate won't matter much if he isn't healthy enough to step into the batter's box in the first place throughout the season. And the Yankees have been forced to acknowledge that such a situation is more of a likelihood at this point than a mere possibility.