The Yankees can plug their biggest hole by playing Giancarlo Stanton in left field

If the Yankees are serious about winning a championship, they need to put their nine best players on the field as much as possible. Simple? Yes. Actual chances of this happening? Slim to none.

Players are slowly starting to trickle into the team’s spring training facility in Tampa, the first sign that the season will soon be upon us. Barring an eleventh-hour trade or free agent signing — probably not out of the question, but unlikely given the fact that they’ve had three and a half months to address this and still did nothing — left field is going to be an offensive weakness for this team.

That is, if they play it safe and roll with some combination of Oswaldo Cabrera and Aaron Hicks. Having that duo as the left field plan is insanely underwhelming and sure to launch fans into fits of frustration, with Cabrera because of the natural issues that hamper any 23-year-old, and with Hicks because he might just not be very good anymore. But they are indeed the safe route, in that it saves the team money on the open market and keeps them from having to deal anyone from their internal ranks.

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Bryan Reynolds looks like he’ll be remembered as the one that got away. Trading the farm for him would have made the team demonstrably better but could have also been a tad reckless depending on what kind of haul the Pirates were asking for. A low-level free agent deal could have been a palatable, safer option as well, but the Yankee front office clearly has a different definition of safe than the people who fill their ballpark. Those people could be spared from Hicks’ slumps on offense and Cabrera’s inevitable growing pains if the Yankees had ventured away from safety this offseason, though there is still one more “unsafe” option that could unlock an even more potent starting lineup.

Giancarlo Stanton is not going to die if they put him in the outfield.

He’ll easily be the worst defensive player in the Yankees’ outfield every time they trot him out, but Harrison Bader and Aaron Judge are excellent defenders at the other two spots and countless teams from major league history have survived with a defensive liability in left field. It will increase his chance of injury for sure, and the big man has had at least one lower body injury in each of the last four seasons, but putting him in left field also allows for the optimal starting nine to play together.

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With Stanton in left — which doesn’t necessarily need to be every day, but perhaps 60 to 70 times, as he did in 2018 — the Yankees can put either DJ LeMahieu or Gleyber Torres at designated hitter while the other one takes second base. This deployment means getting LeMahieu and Torres (good hitters) at-bats over Hicks (a bad hitter) and Cabrera (a talented but still wildly inexperienced hitter). All that for the price of a little defensive downgrade and more miles on Stanton’s body, with the upside being the presumed production pump that comes with turning Hicks into a cheerleader and Cabrera as an as-needed utilityman.

LeMahieu has been sidelined with his fair share of injuries as well over the last two years, so there’s an argument to be made that he needs the days at DH just as much as Stanton. The same Stanton, by the way, who manager Aaron Boone said will play the outfield “in spurts”. That statement also mentioned using Stanton in right field at Yankee Stadium when Judge needs a day off from playing the field — and Stanton handling the smaller left field acreage in road parks like Boston and Houston — but it should easily be extended to putting him in left field whenever Boone wants LeMahieu and Torres to both be in the lineup.

Right now, the only other way to do that is by plugging LeMahieu at third with Torres at second and Josh Donaldson on the bench. That alignment may very well get some play as well, but it’d also sacrifice the infield defense that the team has prioritized in recent years. Donaldson ranked second among American League third baseman last year in Defensive Runs Saved and third in Statcast’s Outs Above Average, making up tremendously for his atrocious numbers at the plate. Donaldson hitting somewhere around seventh in the order and flashing that kind of glove at the hot corner is better than moving him up to squeeze Hicks’ bat in, or even having LeMahieu at third with Hicks in left while Stanton remains entrenched at DH.

On hypothetical days where Stanton plays left field, the Yankees can put him, Judge, LeMahieu, Torres and Anthony Rizzo in the first five spots of their lineup card, a very unpleasant experience for opposing pitchers. On days where Stanton is at DH, one of either LeMahieu or Torres has to sit, unless they feel comfortable enough with LeMahieu’s third base capabilities to remove a potential Gold Glover from the role. Another way to frame this is by asking whose injury-riddled body is more important to protect: Stanton or LeMahieu. Playing outfield carries more inherent risk of hurting something — more running, the chance of crashing into a wall, colliding with a teammate while chasing a fly ball, etc. — but taking risks often leads to championships. Stanton also makes more money, if you want to look at things from a capitalistic, “which asset is more valuable to us” perspective.

The Astros faced a similar dilemma last postseason with Yordan Alvarez, who they ultimately chose to put in left field for ten of their 13 playoff games rather than encasing him in the preservative DH bubble wrap and going with a stronger glove in left field, already one of the least important defensive spots on the diamond. All that happened was they won the World Series.

While Alvarez is eight years younger than Stanton and has played over 1,000 fewer MLB games, he also now has one more ring than Stanton. Surely the Yankees’ slugger would take the jewelry and deal with the occasional defensive blunder or ache and pain along the way.

After playing just 41 total games in 2019 and 2020, Stanton appeared in 249 over the last two seasons. He put a glove on for 64 of those and in both seasons, his hitting statistics are actually better in games where he plays outfield, albeit in a smaller sample.

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The will they, won’t they tension between Stanton and his outfield glove could power a two-hour romantic comedy. If that movie is going to have a happy ending — in the Yankees’ case, with a trophy — they need to just finally get together for good.