Giancarlo Stanton's legendary power is unmatched, both in the Statcast era and in Tall Tales

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Giancarlo Stanton (Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images)

When Giancarlo Stanton came up in the minor leagues, the stories he told were more important than the stats.

Stanton, who hit his MLB postseason-leading fifth home run Saturday night to send the Yankees to the World Series and earn ALCS MVP honors, hit 89 homers in just 324 MiLB- on his way to the big leagues. Play. In 2008, he hit 39 home runs for Greensboro. At Double-A Jacksonville in 2010, he struck out 21 in just 53 games, earning promotion to the majors.

It wasn't the number of home runs but the way he hit them that everyone around the minors remembered back then.

There was the Huntsville home run that cleared a 60-foot scoreboard in left center field, the fence nearly 400 feet from home plate, where Stanton hit the ball. At the time, Stanton called it the furthest he had ever hit a ball.

It was just one of several monumental home runs. Find a fan who saw the Stanton hit in 2008, 2009 or 2010 and there's a pretty good chance they'll have a story to tell.

Stanton, Bryce Harper and, a few years later, Joey Gallo were the latest in a long line of sluggers who stood out because their accomplishments could only be described and appreciated. Minor league teams were not regularly televised. There was no trackman that could measure the exit velocity of Stanton's latest blast and compare it to his other best homers or to Harper's bombs 600 miles away.

Much like Mickey Mantle's home run at Griffith Stadium, which seemed to add another 10 feet to the distance every time someone described it, these home runs were part real and part the kind of tall tales that make baseball a sport that Retellings are often even better.

We don't have that anymore. I raise my hand and admit that I'm in the group that's ruining it. These days, long home runs, even in the minors, are quantifiable. We'll have a video of it. They are measured using the Trackman radar. We know exactly how hard they were hit and how far they are expected to have traveled.

We gained something with that. I can tell you that Jo Adell of the Angels hit a 514-foot home run, the longest in Triple-A in the last two seasons. I can tell you that Chris Gittens and Jhonkensy Noel are the only two Triple-A hitters to hit a ball faster than 118 mph in the last two seasons.

But we also lost something. Once you can quantify something so precisely, you lose some of the storytelling and endless, unwinnable debates that were often part of being a baseball fan.

In 2010, I couldn't tell you whether Stanton or Harper was the best at hitting the ball farther. I had to follow Joey Gallo through the South Atlantic League and the Carolina League if I wanted to experience my own unforgettable moment of breathtaking power (he hit a home run in Winston-Salem that left everyone in the stadium, including me, picking their jaws off the floor). ).

Forever we will know what was once unknowable. But here, too, Stanton stands out. Because he is the last hitter of the tall tale era and has proven that he also has the best raw power of the first generation of the analytics era.

Stanton leads all active MLB hitters in home runs. With over 500 home runs, he is well on his way to ending his career. But the way he did it created a niche all his own.

Since 2015, there have been 87 home runs estimated to have traveled more than 475 feet. Stanton has eight of them. Nobody else has more than three. Stanton has one of three home runs estimated to exceed 500 feet, although Nomar Mazara's 505-foot blast surpasses Stanton's 504-foot home run, making it the longest in Statcast history.

Since 2015, 122 balls have been hit at more than 118 miles per hour. Stanton has 58 of those 122. Aaron Judge is second… with 14. Since 2015, 23 balls have been hit at more than 120 mph. Stanton hit 16 of those 23. There were 11 balls reaching speeds over 121 miles per hour. Stanton has six of those eleven.

Stanton is 34 years old. He's still a top-notch hitter, but his prime is several years ago. Still, that year, the first year the MLB kept official bat speed statistics, Stanton swung his bat the fastest of any major league player, averaging 81.2 miles per hour. Oneil Cruz is second at 78.6 mph. Only 11 batters averaged more than 76 miles per hour. Stanton's bat speed is unique and his tendency to swing as hard as he can on almost every shot also makes him unique.

If you want to argue that Stanton hits the ball harder than any other hitter in MLB history, you can make a good argument, but we can never answer that. Maybe Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron, Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds had more power.

But if you want to argue that Stanton hits the ball harder than anyone in the Statcast era, then that's an indisputable fact. The biggest and baddest bully of the last days of the tall tale era has proven the tall tales to be true.