Wacky injury theory might explain Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton's elbow disaster

Previously, Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton's double elbow injury has been ascribed to swing changes he made in 2024, heading towards the postseason. Somehow, the theories have gotten even stranger as Stanton's recovery has dragged on, forcing him to miss the first Opening Day of his career.

According to the latest attempts to make sense of something that can hardly be explained logically, Stanton might be suffering the after-effects of an ill-advised change in equipment last season.

"It seems that a bat switch was recommended to Stanton last year," MLB insider Jon Heyman wrote on Thursday.

Pointedly, he followed with, "The recommender is no longer around the Yankees."

Giancarlo Stanton's elbow injuries may have begun with new bat in 2024 (Yankees have removed the person who advised this)

Clearly, the new bat worked; Stanton's October was generational, as he bailed the Yankees out of offensive doldrums seemingly every night. After a 2023 season where he hit .191 after recovering from an April leg issue, homering 24 times but subtracting 0.8 bWAR from the Yankees in a non-defensive role (the bat was that bad), Stanton surged last season (115 OPS+), turning around his career in the process. When October came, he hit four homers in a five-game ALCS, most of them absurdly impactful, and also won an ALDS game in Kansas City with a late moonshot (and nearly did the same in Game 1 of the World Series).

While Stanton had evolved to "good bat" after finishing 2023 as "bad bat," it turns out the actual bat may have been markedly worse than the stick he was using the previous season. We're thankful the bat helped deliver an all-time October, but are also more confused than ever now.

This isn't the first time a similarly strange diagnosis has been used to explain a Yankee's troubles in the past year. Alex Verdugo's batting glove allergy apparently affected him from 2021 to Aug. 2024, though learning of the issue didn't help him get paid this offseason.

Bottom line? If this is true, you can add one more improbable injury to the Yankees' mix, a team that has been afflicted by abject nonsense more than any other for the past two decades.