TAMPA, Fla. _ Tricky thing about the sun. If you're standing on the planet Earth during the daytime, that giant ball of burning gases has a decent chance of impacting your life, one way or the other.
"The sun is always there," Brett Gardner said. "It doesn't move."
Give Gardner an A-plus in astronomy. And we figure a C-minus to left-field candidate Giancarlo Stanton for his rocky debut at the position _ mostly for repeatedly getting blinded _ during Sunday's 9-1 loss to the Rays at Steinbrenner Field.
The Yankees already had a right fielder by the name of Aaron Judge when Brian Cashman pulled off the heist of the winter and traded for Stanton. When the NL MVP essentially drops in your lap, and you convince the boss that $260 million is pennies on the dollar for a 59-homer slugger, the position stuff can always be sorted out later.
That moment finally arrived Sunday, with Aaron Boone giving Stanton his first major-league start in left _ he last played there five games at Double-A Jacksonville _ and Judge over in his customary right-field post. Gardner was in center, where he still was too far away to bail out Stanton on a pair of deep fly balls that probably would have been caught by someone like, say, Gardner, for example.
The first was a long drive by Jake Bauers in the second inning, and Stanton seemed ready to snare it while running into the gap. But at the last moment, with his glove raised, Stanton had to look away and the ball clanged off leather for a double. The other came in the fourth, when Kevin Kiermaier sliced a high shot that Stanton didn't appear to see very well _ and not at all before it hopped the fence for a ground-rule double.
"Yeah, they were in the sun," Stanton said. "But that doesn't matter. It's still part of the game."
Give Stanton extra credit for not making excuses. By any defensive metric, Stanton was a solid right fielder for the Marlins, and he knows those balls need to be caught. And if Sunday's game had been played at night, maybe we're not even having this discussion (though who's to say how the lights may have affected him). But the Yankees need to see Stanton show some degree of competence in the Grapefruit League if they're going to trust him in left field during the regular season, regardless of what time first pitch is.
Boone made sure he had Stanton's back afterward. Just 10 games into his managerial career, Boone isn't about to utter a single word that might possibly be construed as remotely negative when it comes to the MVP. As such, Boone praised Stanton for a good first step and decent effort tracking both balls while piling all the blame on the cloudless sky.
"You know what?" Boone said. "I honestly feel like it was a positive and certainly part of the process. We picked about as tough a day as you could have to play in Florida."
Apparently on the YES broadcast, Boone also blamed the wind as the sun's accomplice, going all-in to demonize poor Mother Nature. But when we offered that up to Stanton, he shrugged. Bottom line, Stanton admitted he had to do a better job out there, and claimed to feel comfortable on that strange patch of grass _ more so than his first few spring-training at-bats. So what does he need to do?
"You get sun vision," Stanton said, cracking a smile.
Whatever that is, Stanton had roughly 48 hours to come up with it before Boone sticks him in leftfield again Tuesday against the Tigers in Lakeland. If this experiment is going to work, the Yankees have to keep throwing Stanton and eventually Judge into that unfamiliar piece of real estate, while praying neither gets hurt learning the ropes.
This reshuffling of outfielders reminds me somewhat of what the Mets did in 2005 after signing Carlos Beltran, which forced Mike Cameron, the incumbent center fielder, to switch to right. Both were skilled athletes and excellent defenders, but Cameron never truly felt comfortable sliding over, and both were seriously injured during a horrific collision that season at Petco Park.
It was a terrible freakish accident, but it serves as a reminder that these position switches don't always go seamlessly, as Stanton discovered on this sun-splashed afternoon.
