Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton Ridiculed After Pivotal Game 3 Play

This isn’t a post necessarily meant to ridicule Giancarlo Stanton, who has been one of the Yankees’ lone bright spots in the World Series so far.

However, we do kind of need to talk about what happened Monday night in Game 3 of the Fall Classic where the Los Angeles Dodgers pushed the Bronx Bombers to the brink of elimination.

LA jumped out to an early lead and kept the suddenly quiet New York bats at bay en route to a 4-2 win that gave the Dodgers a commanding 3-0 series lead.

The Yankees did threaten to score in the bottom of the fourth inning after Stanton doubled to left field with one out. It was the first real sign of life for the New York offense against Walker Buehler. Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe blooped a single into left field. Stanton, who might be the worst runner in baseball, made his way to third as Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernández charged the ball. As Stanton made the turn, third-base coach Luis Rojas waved him around.

Hernández, who doesn’t have a good throwing arm, cleanly fielded the ball and threw a strike to home plate. Stanton was out — by a bit.

You can watch the game-changing play here.

“We’re gonna challenge Teoscar there a little bit, especially when he’s moving to his right. Credit to him there,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said in a postgame press conference. “I thought (Stanton) had a pretty good jump and move around third base, so, tough when you’re behind a few there but a perfect throw is able to get him there. I’ll go back and look at it some more, though.”

Ultimately, you want to defer to the big league manager son-of-a-coach who has spent his entire life in the sport on this sort of thing, but Hernández going to his right is seemingly a far easier play than going to his left. He had all the momentum in the world. More importantly, when Boone did get another look at it, he probably didn’t like what he saw. Stanton hadn’t even touched third base when Hernández fielded the ball. An 80-grade runner would have struggled to score there.

Making the third out of the inning at home plate, and killing the closest thing the Yankees had to a rally all night, didn’t help matters. Had Rojas instead held Stanton, it would have brought Anthony Rizzo to the plate representing the tying run.

But at the same time, it was a desperate move by a team that can’t get anything going on offense.

Alas, it didn’t take long for the internet to do its thing. You can check out a slew of jokes at Stanton’s expense by clicking the link here.

You almost kind of have to feel bad for Stanton, though. His inability to run at anything resembling league average is well-known at this point. He was certainly running as hard as his body would allow him. And it can’t be overstated just how good he has been in the World Series, at least compared to his teammates.

The Yankees are up against it now. They’ll try to extend the World Series — and their season — in Game 4 on Tuesday night.