Hour 2: Releasing Stanton?

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So good, so good, so good.

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This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

**Michael Kay** (0:34)
I got to get more Kay.

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**Michael Kay** (0:41)
Welcome back to the show, everybody. So good stuff from Chris Sims and Paul Feinbaum. I loved having them as a weekly last year and we'll definitely do that during the football season as well.
I really thought that NBC, although he still works for NBC, taking him off to Sunday Night Football, that didn't make sense to me. I thought he was one of the best things on that show. I know they streamlined it. They brought in Mike Tomlin, but that doesn't mean that Chris Sims shouldn't have been on there. I'm glad that he's still under the NBC umbrella with all of his podcasts and the NBC Sports YouTube channel and things like that. But I will miss him on Sunday Night Football, but we're not going to miss him here because we are going to have him and he's going to give you great takes throughout the season about the NFL. Now, something that doesn't make sense, and we talked about this a little bit yesterday, and it started when the news broke on Saturday that Jean-Carlo Stanton had re-injured, well, it was another injury to the other calf. So he had two separate calf injuries on one calf, and then in trying to get ready and probably be activated on September 1st, he injured the other calf, actually fell down running, which is kind of startling and stunning. And it started a very slow drum beat among some fans that the Yankees have to release Stanton right now.
They can't build around them next year. They've got to release them, just eat the money. The Yankees are only on the hook, I think for like $25 million for next year. And then the buyout of the other year, which I'm sure they wouldn't pick up. And it doesn't make sense to me. Now, I'm not here to try to manage the Yankees' money. That's not my job. It's not of any interest to me. I couldn't care less. It's beyond my pay grade, to tell you the truth. But this isn't about money, because they're going to have to pay the money whether they release them or not. But why release them? And I think that's a knee-jerk reaction from some fans that are angry that he has not been able to keep himself healthy. So let's just release him and get rid of him, and so we don't have to think about him anymore. And I don't think that that's a wise thing to do, because we have seen that when healthy, he could be a force in the lineup, and could provide protection in the middle of the order. I mean, if you look at how the Yankees have struggled against left-handed pitching since Judge went down, well, Stanton is a part of that as well. Now, if you had Judge and Stanton in the lineup, all of a sudden, teams wouldn't be pulling left-handers out of mothballs in order to make appearances against the Yankees. So it's a deterrent, if anything. Now, there's no way to plan that Stanton is going to be a useful player next year. No way to plan. The one thing that I would agree with some fans about would be this.
Don't plan around him. Don't go into the 2027 season thinking, this guy's our main DH, and not having a fallback plan. Because even this year, the Yankees went into the season having a fallback plan. And the fallback plan happened to be Paul Goldschmidt. And that fallback plan, that insurance plan really paid off for the team. Because for about two months, he was outstanding. And they would have been in a lot of trouble if he was not that good. Then I think at the age of 38, they probably used him a little bit too much. I think he wore down a little bit, but he still has good numbers against left-handed pitching, which is what you want.