#Yankees Giancarlo Stanton making impact in multiple ways

WASHINGTON — The Yankees’ Invisible Man of 2019 has been their Most Visible Player of 2020.

Aaron Boone’s crew suffered its first loss of the season on Saturday, as James Paxton’s, sporting a diminished fastball, tallied only three outs in a 9-2 defeat to the defending champion Nationals at Nationals Park. At 1-1, the Yankees will go bullpenning against Patrick Corbin, the high-end arm on which they passed two offseasons ago, in their first rubber game of Coronavirus Ball.

There wouldn’t be much else to discuss from this contest if not for Giancarlo Stanton, who crushed his second tape-measure homer in as many games and connected far more profoundly before the game, when he joined his teammate Aaron Hicks in kneeling during the national anthem, the pair becoming the first Yankees players to make the powerful statement in these refreshingly woke times.

“Just to show that we’re still in this fight,” Stanton said, referring to the battle against systemic racism. “Just wanted to reiterate that it can’t be lost. It’s important to keep this movement forward with a simple message, [then] go out and play. I thought it was the right thing to do.

“A lot of my teammates haven’t experienced some of the things that I have. … Some have. Just give them a little insight on the daily lives that we’ve gone through growing up. I would say it’s a little different now because we’re popular, more aware but at the same time, you can’t forget how things got here.”

If Stanton can stay healthy — quite the “if,” admittedly — he appears poised to not only be the high-impact player the Yankees know he can be but also serve as an important voice in the critical, national discussion we are holding on race relations.

Not bad for a guy who spent last year primarily as the topic of discussions about his durability or lack thereof and, directly correlated to that, his ginormous contract. That’s what happens when you earn $26 million, with well over another $200 million-plus coming to you through 2027, for playing in only 18 regular-season games and five more (out of nine) in the playoffs, a startling drop-off from his good but not great maiden pinstriped voyage in 2018. That he would’ve missed Opening Day this year if not for the shutdown only intensified the concerns about his ability to stay on the field.

Already, he has shown he still has ability, period, on the field. With the Yankees trailing 3-1 the fourth inning, Stanton pulverized Erick Fedde’s fourth-inning, 3-and-0 fastball an estimated 483 feet into left-center field. The exit velocity of 121.3 miles per hour marked the second-hardest hit tracked by Statcast since the service began in 2015, as per Sarah Langs of MLB.com; Stanton owns the hardest-hit shot, too, 121.7 mph in 2018. He added a double and walk to give him a .667/.714/1.833 slash line for 2020.

“He looks great,” Aaron Boone said. “I feel like he’s just in such a good frame of mind. … I’m really excited about where he’s at right now.”

Boone expressed similar enthusiasm over the courageous displays by Stanton and Hicks. They’ll have to block out noise to continue to kneel during the anthem, as both men said they intend to do, and they’ll rely on the sort of support that DJ LeMahieu displayed when he stood next to the pair and patted them on their backs.

“We had a great team meeting before Opening Day,” LeMahieu revealed. “Stanton talked in front of [about] 60 people. … [He] really said some powerful things. He wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

Stanton played a leading role in convincing his own teammates as well as the Nationals to kneel en masse for one minute prior to the anthem on Thursday night, then rising together as the anthem played. He and Hicks advanced their cause on Saturday.

“One thing I want to make sure, that I want to take the heat and be part of this fight,” Stanton said. He’s part of it. And the more he excels on the field, the larger a platform he’ll build to address the deeper stuff. It’s a winning formula the Yankees, and most of us, embrace.