Giancarlo’s Encore

He got paid. Now it’s time to figure out how much fantasy owners should pay for Giancarlo Stantons’ services in 2015. The third-best outfielder and sixth-best overall player last season has even been mentioned as a threat to the number one pick that would otherwise be owned by Mike Trout. Expectations are high.

First, let’s rid ourselves of the notion that we should pick Stanton ahead of Trout. Trout is two years younger, so no matter what peak you believe in, Trout is further away from it or closer to it on the other side. Even if Trout stole a career-worst 16 bases this year, he’s coming down off a higher peak with respect to speed. And Trout’s career batting average is thirty points higher than Stanton’s. You’d have to value Stanton’s projected ten homers more than Trout’s projected 21 points of batting average and 14 stolen bases. (I’ll take Trout’s lineup over Stanton’s too, for what it’s worth.)

But there’s a lot of room in budgets for the second-best outfielder, and with Michael Brantley set to regress, and Jose Bautista older and injury-prone, Stanton is probably fighting Andrew McCutchen for the title of second-best outfielder. For McCutchen to move ahead in 2015, though, you have to think that Stanton is ready for regression.

Stanton was headed for his first full healthy season, and it’s hard to hold that beaning against him. But multivariable regressions don’t care about bean balls, and they see 198 missed days since 2009. Throw those numbers in Rob Arthur’s injury projector and you get nine. Nine missed days next season. Yes, it’s not great to see all sorts of knee and right thigh issues on his player card so far, but this gives you some perspective. You can believe in a 650 plate appearance projection.

Maybe that right thigh strain that cost him a month-plus in 2013 did hurt him in the power department, too. Because other than that year, Stanton has provided steady power production. By traditional results, since it was the only full year his isolated slugging percentage was below his career average (which is second in baseball since 2010). By batted ball distance, he’s been a power hitter every year of his career:

Dude hits the ball hard. His flies and homers went the fourth-furthest this year, and it wasn’t a noticeable increase on his 2013 work. Two feet of distance separated the two years.

Even better news is that Stanton has begun to push the ball more. Last year was the first time he pushed his outfield contact to the opposite field more often than he pulled them down the line in left. His overall opposite-field percentage was also at a career high (23.5%, career 21.1%).

Pushing the ball more has made him even more dangerous on the ball inside. Take a look at Stanton in 2014 compared to 2013 by run values and you can see the effect. Now that he can cover the outside corner better, pitchers have to come inside more and he can wallop the inside pitch.

This might address the only flaw on his resume: batting average. Being able to cover more of the plate should help cut down on the strikeouts, which is the primary source of his mediocre batting averages (mediocre for a star at least). Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that Stanton showed the best strikeout rate of his career this past season.

The fact that Stanton has been able to cover more of the plate and show league-leading type power at the same time should bode well for his future. The few flaws that you have to squint to find — knee problems, contact problems, the batting average — seem less important when seen through these prisms.

Even the most pessimistic aging curves for power and strikeouts suggest that Stanton should, at the very least, tread water in those facets of his game. With Andrew McCutchen at 28 years old, there’s a very strong argument for pushing Stanton ahead of him in 2015. That argument starts with the fact that Stanton was better than him in 2014, really.

And the argument ends with the realization that Giancarlo Stanton’s encore should at least be as good as his career-best season this year.