Giancarlo Stanton Opts to Stay with Yankees for $218 Million

 Yankees fans get ready to wince. 

Giancarlo Stanton is staying long term with the Yankees for the next seven years for $218 million rather than opt out and hit free agency. 

The news is sure to make Yankees fans grumpy after Stanton spent a better part of the last two seasons injured. In 2019, Stanton was limited to 18 games with a biceps strain and right knee injury. When he did play, Stanton hit .288 with three homers and 13 RBI that year. 

This season Stanton was limited to 23 games in a 60-game COVID-19 shortened season, hitting only .250 with four homers and 11 RBI. Yet he was the Yankees most consistent hitter in the playoffs batting .308 with six homers and 13 RBI. Still though he has yet to replicate the hitter he was three years ago in 2017 when he crush 59 homers and drove in 132 RBI as a member of the Miami Marlins. 

Stanton, who will turn 31 next season, is due $29 million in each of the next two seasons and $32 million annually through 2025. And, $29 million in 2026, and $27 million in 2027. His contract ends in 2028 with a $25 million club option and a $10 million buyout. 

The Marlins will help the Yankee finance the deal sending New York $30 million to offset part of the contract and $5 million each July 1 and October 1 in the final three years of the deal. 

What makes this deal even worse? Stanton has a full no-trade clause, and considering economics right now, nobody in their right mind is going to take on that contract off the Yankees books.  So basically Stanton has to produce or this poison pill contract will become an albatross that Brian Cashman and company will wish would go away. But it won't.