Is Giancarlo Stanton Good Again?

By E.J. Fagan

August 16, 2025

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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I haven’t been Giancarlo Stanton’s biggest fan for a while now. Other than some awesome postseason heroics, his hitting had fallen so low that I advocated a few time for releasing him. I didn’t believe that his incredible postseason numbers were replicable or a sign of things to come.

But now he’s hitting .299/.373/.576 in 161 plate appearances. While Statcast had him getting a little luck in his first few weeks, his expected stats are moving toward his batting line real quick:

It took him a little bit of time to shake the rust off, but he’s hitting .320/.387/.682 since July 1st. His average exit velocity is 99 mph (!) in August.

During that same time, his xwOBA is .495 (!!!). His season 161 wRC+ is his best rate in New York. Other than the playoffs, the summer of 2025 has been Stanton’s best sustained period of excellence since at least the first half of 2022:

The team has struggled during Stanton’s hot streak, but they would be in way worse shape if he weren’t hitting like a monster.

But is it real? I’m still skeptical. Stanton actually posted a similar xwOBA pretty consistently from 2021-2024, but his batting line was a much more pedestrian .231/.310/.472. All of his 2025 rates—strikeouts, whiff, bat speed, exit velocity, walks, sprint speed—are pretty much in line with what he’s done outside of 2023.

That said, his current hot streak is very real. If you give him two weeks in June to get back into the swing of things, his 2025 xwOBA jumps to .407. If you cut the line at the all star break, his xwOBA is .425. He’s not just getting lucky, and if anything the luck gods stole a few hits from him in late July.

There’s also one improved Statcast rate that stands out to me. Stanton’s launch angle sweet spot percentage, is at a career best 36.6%. Stanton struggled during the 2021-2023 stretch with hitting way too many hard ground balls.

So should Aaron Boone continue to play him as much as his body can handle? Yes he should! Stanton is hitting like peak Judge right now with no significant platoon split. I hope this lasts forever. Maybe the early season break helped.

But how long can it last? I don’t know. Stanton is an outlier in every sense of the word. He might defy gravity in ways that few MLB players can. I’ll enjoy watching him murder baseballs while I can.