Kuzul

Giancarlo Stanton is rich. You and I are not. 

Perhaps this explains why we weren’t slamming $20,000 champagne and presumably playing high-stakes ostrich polo with Stanton inside a Miami nightclub this week.

TMZ reports that the Miami Marlins outfielder celebrated his new, $325 million contract at Miami’s Delano Hotel Monday night. He schmoozed, took pictures with fans and uncorked a bottle of champagne worth roughly the tag price of a Dodge Dart. 

Stanton cracked the top on a $20,000 bottle of Moet Nectar Imperial Rose Methuselah Leopard Luxury Edition—a rare, six-liter bottle wrapped in 22-carat gold leaf. It cures shingles…or just tastes really good. 

TMZ’s report alleges that Stanton was out until 3 a.m. Tuesday morning in the company of a “well-known Miami party queen” named “Julz.” This woman supposedly purchased him the bottle of high-quality leopard wine.

So no, the new owner of the most lucrative sports contract in American history did not pick up the check. He’ll have the rest of his natural life to bear that cross. We’ll give him his final freebie.

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Stop being surprised. It has been happening for years, and the end is nowhere in sight.

Whether you think it is bad or good, the level of care from the payers and the payees is virtually nonexistent. There will always be a market, and there will always be someone willing to meet the price.

Giancarlo Stanton’s 13-year, $325 million contract with the Miami Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria is more proof that Major League Baseball’s spending habits will not stop. To call this latest deal exorbitant is inaccurate, simply because it is right in line with what MLB teams have been doing since the start of this latest millennium.

MLB loot is nothing new. Baseball owns 21 of top 22 richest contracts in sports history. Boxer Floyd Mayweather ($180 mil) on list at 12.

— Rob Parker (@RobParkerLocal4) November 18, 2014

Regardless of how those contracts have played out, are playing out or will play out, they won’t stop coming. From Kevin Brown in 1999 to Alex Rodriguez in 2001 (and 2008) to Albert Pujols in 2012 to Clayton Kershaw in 2014 to Giancarlo Stanton now, baseball players snatch the largest and longest contracts in North American sports.

And just when we think we have seen the pinnacle of these kinds of deals, someone reaches a new level. That is likely to happen again since Stanton’s deal is likely to set the bar for guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. Trout is the best player in baseball and was just named the American League’s unanimous MVP, making it entirely likely that his next mega-contract will trump Stanton’s—inflation in 2020 could help. Harper is younger than Trout and Stanton and has Scott Boras as his agent, again making it possible that he can at least match Stanton’s level of financial security.

It is no accident that baseball is the sport that keeps setting the mark for richest athletes. Despite the completely false insinuations that the game is dying in this country, owners continue handing out nine-figure contracts and television companies contribute billions to franchise revenues. Those television contracts, coming in an era where live sports coverage is valued more than ever, can transform teams with dwindling payrolls into big spenders overnight.

As these contracts are locked in, it brings an annual glut of “baseball needs a salary cap” disgust. MLB is the only one of the four major North American sports leagues—we are counting baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL here—without a salary cap, and that is because it does not need one. Competitive balance in baseball is just fine—the Kansas City Royals just came within a game of winning the World Series—and a hard salary cap does not ensure a league will have it anyway.

Not only is the argument’s premise wrong, but also a salary ceiling is just never going to happen. People should stop wasting time, keystrokes and breath on lobbying for an MLB salary cap. The players have the strongest union in sports and maybe the world, and even the owners have stopped harping about a cap. Once that happens, you know it’s a futile point because the entire purpose of salary cap is to help line ownership’s pockets.

Complaining about baseball not capping payroll is the same as fighting for the richest people in the sport to get more money. It’s not like that unspent revenue will go to lowering ticket prices or merchandise.

What could curb the spending is seeing some of the more recent contracts play out badly, which is almost a certainty. Looking at what Pujols and Miguel Cabrera do from here until the end of their deals—Pujols has seven years remaining, Cabrera has eight—could scare teams into not handing out such massive contracts to players on the evil side of 30.

Big deals still will come in the way Stanton’s just did, where teams sign a player well before he hits free agency and while he is still in his mid-20s. This kind of deal makes more sense than waiting for a player to become a free agent at 29 or 30 and then handing him nine figures and seven to 10 years.

Not that teams have to give out those deals.

The way baseball’s pay system works is a player needs more than three years of service time before he can become arbitration eligible. This keeps costs down, even for elite players as it became common knowledge two springs ago when the Los Angeles Angels were paying Trout $510,000 for the 2013 season. He still made only $1 million this year, which is way cheap relative to the market.

Even after those first three years, elite players still come at a low cost because they can’t hit free agency until they have six years of service time. That means for six years, a team can have a top-flight player for well below market value and through many of his prime years.

That isn’t the best way for teams to keep those stars, though. Rather than running the risk of upsetting the player to the point where he won’t re-sign with that club after six seasons, teams are willing to sign those players to contracts that are under market value. Again, Trout is a fine example as he signed a six-year, $144.5 million contract last March.

This benefits the player because it gives him guaranteed financial security. This benefits the team because it gives it cost certainty and the player at less than what an open market would dictate.

Unlike the NFL or NBA, MLB has the only true open market when it comes to free agency. There are no “max contracts” or caps, meaning teams can give a player any amount of money, and the only penalty for high spending is a “competitive balance tax” that rich teams have no problem paying. That means the highest bidder can win the player, and the highest bid has no ceiling, giving us another reason why baseball’s wild spending has no reason to end.

Owners will continue giving out contracts the general public dubs as “absurd,” and players will happily sign them even if circumstances are less than ideal, as B/R’s Scott Miller documented Monday. While TV money floods in and a salary-cap debate continues to not exist, there will be money to spend. 

So if you haven’t done so yet, get accustomed to more deals like Stanton’s coming down the chute. Baseball’s reality is it can afford these contracts and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future regardless of risk.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Giancarlo Stanton is about to ink a deal of epic proportions.

The Miami Marlins are close to signing the 25-year-old outfielder to the richest contract in baseball history: an unprecedented 13 years and a ghastly $325 million. The news was first reported by Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.

According to Chris Cotillo of MLB Daily Dish, the opt-out clause will come when Stanton is 30.

The deal is crazy on all kinds of levels. Stanton is coming off an MVP-caliber season in which he hit 37 home runs and 105 RBI while sporting a .288 average, .950 OPS and 6.5 WAR. Not eligible for free agency until after the 2016 season, it was long assumed that Stanton’s days in Miami would come to an end sooner or later.

After all, the Marlins have a history of dealing away their best players, and Stanton had made it clear in the past that he was unhappy with the way the organization had handled things. Just a few months ago, it seemed certain that Stanton would skip town the first chance he got.

Guess things change and differences are set aside when there are $325 million on the table.

It is hard not to question Stanton in the fallout of this news. That is not because he took the money. He has every right in the world to secure those riches, especially after suffering a nearly career-threatening injury at the end of last season when a Mike Fiers fastball hit him square in the face, leaving him with multiple fractures and lacerations.

It is safe to say Stanton’s life flashed before his eyes there. At the very least, he was reminded that nothing in this game or in life is guaranteed. It would not be surprising if that incident played a role in him taking this deal.

Combine that freak accident with all the zeroes being thrown his way and the notion that Miami was somewhat competitive in 2014, and you have all the answers as to why Stanton would make a deal with the devil—Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria.

What Loria has done throughout his history in baseball is the businessman’s equivalent to the scorched earth policy that the Soviets so famously used against the Germans in World War II. In other words, he has left a trail of nothingness, despair and destruction behind in his wake, all for his own personal success.

Previously an owner of the Montreal Expos, he is a huge reason why Canada only has one major league team now.

His reign as the ultimate decision-maker in Florida has been disappointing as well. He did bring the franchise its second World Series win in 2003. But from there, Loria tore the team apart. In an effort to slash payroll, Loria traded Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell, Brad Penny, Luis Castillo, Juan Pierre, Alex Gonzalez, Derrek Lee and Juan Encarnacion—all key members of that championship team—over the next two years.

Ivan Rodriguez and A.J. Burnett left via free agency during that span as well. In 2007, the Marlins traded Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera—now arguably the best hitter in the game—to the Detroit Tigers.

Fans distanced themselves from the franchise. Loria blamed a lot of the team’s problems on its stadium, so he struck a plan to use taxpayer money—the same taxpaying fans he had screwed over by scrapping a winning team—to build a new stadium in Miami.

It was a brand-new start in 2012 with Loria supposedly being a whole new man running things. The Florida Marlins became the Miami Marlins, and they changed their colors and uniforms and moved into the luxurious and expensive Marlins Park in Miami. Keeping his promise of fielding a competitive team, Loria spent $191 million to bring in Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell. The Marlins traded for Carlos Zambrano and brought World Series champ Ozzie Guillen in to manage.

Marlins baseball was looking good again.

That would last half a year. Loria had the team trade Anibal Sanchez, Omar Infante and Hanley Ramirez halfway through the 2012 campaign. That offseason, the Marlins shipped Reyes, Buehrle and a handful of others to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fans had lost all faith and trust in Loria.

Which is exactly why it is so perplexing that Stanton would sign away the prime of his career to a man that lies so much that his pants are surely on fire by now.

With so much money involved, Stanton’s only way out will be that opt-out clause. If he doesn’t utilize it, then he is stuck in Miami until the end of those 13 years. The question is, will Loria also be willing to pay for and maintain a contender around him?

Based on history, the answer is an absolute no.

For Stanton, there were plenty of reasons to take this deal—dollars being a big one.

However, there are a lot of risks here as well. Loria has never been about winning. Instead, he is all about dollar signs. As long as he is making money, Loria has never cared what the product on the field looked like.

That is probably not the sales pitch he made to Stanton. Instead, there were probably a lot of promises about turning the team around, winning and bringing a new level of excitement to Marlins baseball with the young slugger at the center of it all. Just like he told fans in 2012.

Those were empty promises and lies. For Stanton’s sake, let’s hope that is not the case again.

All stats were obtained via Baseball-Reference.com.

Gary Phillips can be contacted at gary.phillips@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @GPhillips2727.

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As the MLB regular season wraps up its final week, there are a few players who are making last pushes to solidify their cases the for individual awards, and one of the most heated races is the competition for the NL MVP crown.

Did Giancarlo Stanton do enough before his injury? Does a pitcher really deserve to win an MVP? Or are there a few dark horses running around and ready to steal the show?

These are some of the questions that need to be asked and answered when selecting the winner, so here is a look at which player should be crowned the most valuable in the NL. 

Dark Horse: Andrew McCutchen—Pittsburgh Pirates

The reigning NL MVP has put together yet another impressive campaign. McCutchen’s .404 on-base percentage is currently top of the NL, his slugging percentage of .537 is second-best and his .310 batting average ranks third among the qualified leaders. 

In the sabermetric stat of “runs created per 27 outs,” McCutchen also leads all players in the league with 8.17 runs, which isn’t shocking when he’s capable of doing things like this.

Perhaps what makes all this that much more impressive is the fact that he has battled with a rib injury for the past month.

Pirates manager Clint Hurdle praised McCutchen’s toughness in an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ron Cook, “He’s the model of a leader that you want on your club. He got through some tough spots early. The good news is he’s in a pretty good place right now. He’s in a competitive place. Everything he’s done has been aggressive.”

As a result of McCutchen’s efforts, the Pirates currently sit comfortably atop the wild-card race with a five-game lead.

Dark Horse: Buster Posey—San Francisco Giants

Just a few months ago, Posey would be nowhere near the discussion for this award. But with a second-half surge like no other, the man they call M-V-Posey in San Francisco will sure be getting some votes now.

At the time of the All-Star break, Posey had a batting average of just .277. Since then, he has batted .351 to lead all NL players with at least 200 at-bats. His 3.4 WAR during that stretch is also the best in the majors, according to FanGraphs.  

More importantly, Posey stepped up for the Giants when it mattered the most.

During the month of September, Posey is slashing a line of .389/.432/.583, and helped the Giants draw within three-and-a-half back in the NL West and go five games up in the wild card.

Favorite: Clayton Kershaw—Los Angeles Dodgers

To say Kershaw had a “nice” season would be an understatement for the ages. The numbers that the 26-year-old southpaw has put up this year are of historic proportions, and they begin with his career-bests of 1.80 ERA, 0.86 WHIP and .870 win percentage.

Kershaw is slated for one more start later this week, but for the moment he has given up the least amount of hits (132), earned runs (38), home runs (nine) and walks (31) he has ever had in a full season.

Kershaw also reached the 20-win mark in a remarkably short span, 26 starts to be exact. Since the expansion of the league, there have been only five other pitchers who accomplished such feat in so few starts, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

Throw in a no-hitter and a majors-best six shutouts along the season, and it becomes that much tougher to argue against Kershaw’s case.

Favorite: Giancarlo Stanton—Miami Marlins

Truth to be told, Stanton’s chances of capturing the NL MVP crown dwindled the moment he was struck in the face by Mike Fiers’ pitch two weeks ago, but that is not to say he should be out of the consideration completely.

Despite missing action since his injury on Sept. 11, many of Stanton’s numbers are still among the NL leaders.

The 37 homers he smashed are still a distant No. 1, and so are his 6.4 WAR, .555 slugging percentage and .950 on-base plus slugging percentage, according to ESPN.

Stanton’s RBI total of 105 has fallen to only second place behind the 112 from Dodgers’ Adrian Gonzalez, and the 115.6 runs he created for the Marlins this season are tied with Pirates’ McCutchen.

One argument against Stanton would be the injury that has cost him the final three weeks of his season, but it should be mentioned that Kershaw missed the first five weeks of his season. Both players should be treated equally for the numbers they put up during the time they were active.

Another argument against Stanton would be Miami’s lack of success, as the team currently stands at 74-81. But without Stanton’s help, just exactly where would the Marlins be this season?

CBSSports’ Jon Heyman put that into perspective:

His performance gave the Marlins hope into September, but that dream died the moment Stanton was struck in the kisser.

But Stanton still was the main reason the Marlins overcame a startlingly low $47 million payroll and disheartening injury to ace pitcher Jose Fernandez to remain in the race…No one could have foreseen a .500 season without Fernandez, but the Marlins came close.

 

Prediction: Giancarlo Stanton

The choice is not made based on whether a pitcher deserves to win the MVP award or not. If a player of any position puts up deserving numbers, they should be in the running.

The case made for Stanton is based on the fact that out of all the previous times a pitcher has won the MVP—be it Justin Verlander in 2011 or Bob Gibson and Denny McLain in 1968—those pitchers took home the award when no other position players came close to being worthy of the honor.

This time around, there is one.

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Sympathy is a powerful thing.

Giancarlo Stanton, the Miami Marlins poster boy with the movie-star looks, glittery smile and enough thunder in his bat to make Mighty Casey look like a slap-hitting second baseman, has that on his side in this year’s National League MVP race.

Sympathy. It yanks on heartstrings and makes people do things they probably should not. In this case, that could mean casting votes for Stanton after his career-best season ended last Thursday when he was drilled in the face by a fastball in Milwaukee.

The aftermath is still gruesome nearly a week later even though the progress is promising, and the Marlins await word on if Stanton can actually return this season.

Stanton’s recovery is good news for him and the Marlins, but the injury itself, which will likely keep him off the field for the rest of the season, should pretty much end his MVP campaign. 

It might be difficult for some to separate sympathy from an open mind, and that could lean some of the undecided voters toward Stanton’s case. What makes that ridiculous, besides the fact that sympathy has nothing to do with this race, is Stanton probably was not the league’s MVP before injury, based on the Bovada odds.

Despite Stanton’s incredible year—he still leads the league in home runs (37), walks (94), slugging percentage (.555) and OPS (.950)—Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is having a historic season, which we have chronicled in this space before. Since Stanton’s injury, Kershaw has extended his lead in the Wins Above Replacement category at Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com.

Whether one believes a pitcher can or cannot ever be as valuable as a position player—a crazy (wrong) debate in itself—what Stanton’s injury has done is left the vote wide open. If you don’t think Kershaw should win the award because he plays only every fifth game, and if Stanton was your pick before his injury, it is time to rethink things.

Pittsburgh Pirates superstar center fielder Andrew McCutchen is now the man to give Kershaw a real run for the MVP Award. McCutchen won the award last season, and it is arguable he is having a better year in 2014, as he leads the league with a .399 on-base percentage, 161 OPS-plus and 162 weighted runs created plus.

Helping McCutchen’s case is a strong stretch run after returning from a rib injury last month. Since Aug. 22, he has hit .333/.371/.567 with a .938 OPS and six homers. The Pirates are 14-8 in that time and have gone from 2.5 games out in the race for the second wild-card spot to 1.5 games up in it entering Tuesday. 

This run, along with Stanton’s injury and the belief by some that a pitcher cannot be a team’s most valuable player, makes McCutchen a serious threat to repeat the NL honor for the first time since Albert Pujols did it in 2008 and 2009. 

It’ll be pretty funny when Andrew McCutchen wins NL MVP again.

— Sean Gentille (@seangentille) September 12, 2014

One of Stanton’s great advantages in this argument was that he had not missed time this season because of an injury, as Kershaw did in April and McCutchen in August. That argument disappeared as Stanton lay on the ground near Miller Park’s home plate, blood spilling from his face and the baseball world watching in shock and fear of how badly it might end. 

Stanton, in order to make his candidacy the top one, needed a strong finish. Even though he had four home runs and three doubles in 10 September games, he was hitting .231 with a .318 OBP in the final month.

Maybe it is possible Stanton could return this season, and if he does, that is great. It is good for a fanbase that has struggled to marry itself to one of the franchise’s recent superstars, and it will be good for Stanton to prove to himself he can still dig into the box against an inside fastball in a major league game before going away for the winter. 

What Stanton’s possible return should not do is cement his case as the league MVP. He was not the best player before the injury, and the gap has since increased while McCutchen has strengthened his resume.

In order to upend a historic season by Kershaw, Stanton needed to stay healthy and productive in the final month. It would have given those unwilling to vote for a pitcher for MVP a sturdier leg to lean on and Stanton a good final whack to change any minds not leaning his way.

That hasn’t happened, and the race is looking like it should have a clear winner by now. Then again, right or wrong, sympathy could be as powerful as any dominant performance.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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After defeating the San Diego Padres on Monday night and notching his 18th win of the season, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw has forced his way into the National League MVP discussion with just a little more than two weeks left in the regular season.

In 24 starts this season, the Dodgers’ ace sports an 18-3 record and leads all pitchers in ERA (1.67), WHIP (0.82) and WAR (7.5) and is the likely front-runner to win the National League CY Young Award.

While pitchers have typically been left off MVP voting ballots, Kershaw’s strong season has pushed him into elite company, via Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com:

With MVP awards typically reserved for position players, Kershaw‘s historic season has started to prove he is more important to his team than the other presumed front-runners: Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen and Miami Marlins right fielder Giancarlo Stanton.

In 128 games this season, McCutchen has hit .311 with 22 home runs, 74 RBI and has an OPS of .938.

Down in Miami, Stanton has batted .291 in 143 games with 37 home runs, leads the National League with 105 RBI and has registered an OPS of .957.

With Pittsburgh holding just a 1.5-game lead in the NL Wild Card and Miami sitting 4.5 games back, McCutchen‘s and Stanton’s great seasons may be diminished if their teams fail to make it to the playoffs.

Kershaw and the Dodgers currently sit atop the National League West with a 3.5-game lead. Barring some unforeseen breakdown, they appear to be headed to the postseason.

While making the postseason is not a prerequisite for winning an MVP award, Kershaw’s WAR of 7.5—and the fact that the Dodgers have won 20 of the 24 games in which he has started—would indicate that without him on the mound, the Dodgers would be fighting with teams like the Marlins in the middle of the pack for a wild-card spot.

The WAR stat has become more commonplace in recent years, and after 2011 MVP Justin Verlander was named the first pitcher to win the award since Roger Clemons in 1986, the groundwork has been laid out for a dominant pitcher like Kershaw to win the award. 

Verlander finished the 2011 season going 24-5 with a 2.40 ERA, a .920 WHIP and led all pitchers with an 8.4 WAR. Twenty-two players received votes in the AL for MVP that season and only one player, Ben Zobrist, finished with a higher WAR (8.7) than Verlander. Despite boasting the higher WAR, Zobrist finished 16th in the balloting.

Just as Verlander sat near the top of all MLB players in 2011 with his WAR, Kershaw‘s 7.5 WAR is the highest among all qualifying players in both leagues. Stanton’s 6.39 and McCutchen‘s 5.47 puts them squarely in the top 20, but that may be what helps Kershaw land the most votes at the end of the season.

There is no guarantee that Kershaw‘s league-leading WAR will help claim him the award, but after comparing his 2014 season to that of Verlander’s in 2011, it appears that Kershaw is quickly headed toward the top of the MVP discussion following his 18th win Monday night. 

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com. 

Follow @MattEurich 

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Entering Friday’s action, Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins is the current National League leader in home runs (36), RBI (102) and slugging percentage (.566). If he’s able to maintain his status in all three categories through the end of the season, he’ll be the first NL player to do so since Dante Bichette of the 1995 Colorado Rockies, per ESPN Stats & Info.

Bichette finished second in MVP voting during his impressive ’95 campaign, accumulating 40 homers, 128 RBI and a career-high .620 slugging percentage. He also swiped 13 bases and collected a whopping 197 hits that season.

Although Stanton still has some catching up to do if he’s going to match those types of numbers, his performance has certainly warranted the MVP buzz that’s been catching steam in recent weeks.

Per ESPN Stats & Info, Stanton was the first player in the majors to top 100 RBI during the 2014 season. He currently has 102, 10 more than Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez (92), who is second in the NL entering Friday.

The Miami right fielder is also just one long ball shy of his career-best mark of 37, set back in the 2012 campaign. Wednesday’s eighth-inning, 400-foot shot tied him with Nelson Cruz of the Baltimore Orioles for the major league lead.

With respect to slugging percentage, Stanton is quite a bit behind Chicago White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu, whose .602 mark makes him the only player in the majors slugging over .600.

With Stanton’s Marlins currently 5.5 games out of the NL wild-card hunt entering Thursday, his slugging prowess will surely be a key factor in any prospective playoff push.

All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise specified. 

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Miami Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton hit his 150th career home run in Monday’s 7-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels, thus becoming the 12th player in major-league history with 150 homers through his age-24 season, per MLB Stat of the Day.

Stanton, who turns 25 in November, hit his milestone homer in the fourth inning off Angels reliever Cory Rasmus, lining a ball well over the left-center-field fence in Anaheim for a 428-foot blast. The three-run homer helped Miami get back to .500, with a 65-65 record leaving them three games back of the San Francisco Giants for the second wild-card spot.

Stanton’s 33 home runs are tops in the National League this season, four ahead of the 29 hit by Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo. With the next closest challengers being New York Mets first baseman Lucas Duda (26) and Atlanta Braves outfielder Justin Upton (25), Stanton has an excellent chance to lead the league in homers for the first time in his career.

Among players who started their careers in the expansion era (since 1961), Stanton—at 24 years, 290 days—is the sixth-fastest to reach 150 homers, per ESPN Stats & Info. The expansion-era record belongs to Andruw Jones (24 years, 158 days), who is followed by Ken Griffey Jr. (24-180), Albert Pujols (24-212), Alex Rodriguez (24-255) and Johnny Bench (24-288).

Off to an historically fast start in his young career, Stanton is already just four home runs away from Dan Uggla’s franchise record of 154.

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Conventional creed these past few years more or less requires everyone in and around Major League Baseball, from players to coaches to executives to media to fans, simply to accept that Mike Trout is the best player on the planet.

But what if Trout, as undeniably superlative as he has been to this point in his still-young career, isn’t even the best outfielder in the sport?

Taking that one step further: What if Trout isn’t the best outfielder to share the same large expanse of green this week? After all, Trout’s Los Angeles Angels are taking on the Miami Marlins and their very own freakishly gifted superstar, Giancarlo Stanton, for a three-game series that started Monday night.

If you ask Stanton, he’s not taking the bait. Here’s what he had to say about Trout before Monday’s showdown:

Catch that right there at the end? “To be on the same field [as Trout] is gonna be cool.”

Well, after Stanton’s performance in Monday’s game—the first time ever these two baseball behemoths, who are the MVP front-runners at the moment, have been on the same field in a regular-season game—maybe it’s the other way around?

“I think it’s great for baseball,” Marlins manager Mike Redmond told Joe Frisaro of MLB.com prior to Monday’s game. “You’ve got two dynamic young players playing on the same field. I know I’m excited to watch and be part of it. Hopefully our guy puts on great show.”

As if on cue, Stanton did just that. Propelled by Stanton’s three-run home run in the fourth inning that broke open what was a 4-0 game, the Marlins beat the Angels—the club with the best record in baseball at 77-52 entering the game—by a score of 7-1.

The victory helped the Marlins (65-65) gain a game in the NL wild-card chase, as they’re now just three back of the San Francisco Giants, who lost to the Colorado Rockies on Monday.

Oh, and not only was the above blast the 33rd of the year for Stanton—a total that leads the National League and is only one shy of the Baltimore Orioles’ Nelson Cruz, who is MLB‘s leader—there’s also this:

While Stanton was busy making history as part of his 1-for-3, three-RBI night with a run and two walks, Trout was going 0-for-4 to drop his average to .285, the lowest it has been since May 28, nearly three months ago.

Heck, Stanton was even responsible for making two of the putouts against Trout, who lined out to him in the sixth and flew out to him in the eighth.

One game obviously is little more than a narrative reinforcement in the still-untested theory that Stanton just might be better than Trout. So how about measuring up each player’s 2014 season as a whole then?

How’s that for a pair of seasons, huh? The two studs’ production has been about as similar as can be, especially when the numbers are as eye-popping as they are. By most of those measures, though, Stanton has been ever so slightly better so far, but it’s extremely close.

To see if we can’t get any more separation, here’s a check on some key advanced metrics:

So much for that idea. Trout and Stanton are just as evenly matched in the deeper digits. Again, however, Stanton has what appears to be the slightest of edges in most categories, thanks to his big game Monday.

In fact, it’s so close that, although Stanton ekes out Trout in Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement (WAR), the two are deadlocked in FanGraphs‘ version.

It’s worth pointing out for a moment that Stanton is trending positively in both aspects of plate discipline: His strikeout and walk rates are both career bests. Trout, on the other hand, is sporting a career-worst 25.2 percent strikeout rate, and that’s something he’s working to fix, per Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com. Of course, Stanton’s 26.2 percent rate is still higher.

Considering the defensive side, Stanton is no slouch with the glove, but Trout is the better defender, particularly because he plays the more premium position of center field, while Stanton handles right.

What’s remarkable is that both players are still so, so young. Everyone knows Trout just turned 23 in August, but Stanton is just 21 months older; he’ll be only 25 after the season in November.

That’s really not much of a disparity when both players are in the majors and performing at such a high level. It’s also at least possible, given their youth, that both of these players are still on the upswing, meaning we may not have seen the best of either one yet.

Even if that’s not the case, this indeed is shaping up to be quite the best-player-in-baseball battle over the next handful of seasons, assuming both stay healthy.

That’s a factor that has been in Trout’s favor to this point but has been Stanton’s bugaboo. The 2014 season is really the first time in Stanton’s career that he’s been fully healthy.

While Trout is on pace for his third straight season with at least 139 games played (and he would have played more than that number in his rookie season of 2012 had the Angels not held him in the minors until late April), Stanton is working on just his second year out of five with at least that many games played.

When you’re healthy, you’re happy, and Stanton has been both this year. His personality and sense of humor come across in this postgame interview from Monday, so yes, dude has the chops to handle being in the running for the face of MLB with Trout, too:

As for which is the best player in baseball, it’s still hard to go against Trout, who owns that throne based on what he’s done at the outset of his career these first three incredible seasons.

But if Stanton is going to continue to improve as much as he has this year, Trout better not get too comfy on his perch.

Statistics are accurate as of Aug. 25 and come from MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com, except where otherwise noted.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter: @JayCat11

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Miami Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton hit his 149th career home run in Sunday’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, thus moving past Hanley Ramirez for sole possession of second place on the Marlins’ all-time home runs list.

Topping said list at 154 is Ramirez’s longtime double-play mate Dan Uggla, who is currently a free agent.

At his current pace, Stanton figures to pass Uggla in mid-September, as the 24-year-old slugger needs just six more homers for sole possession of first place.

Stanton’s 2014 campaign has already earned a top-10 spot on the single-season franchise home runs list, per Complete Baseball Encyclopedia (via GammonsDaily.com).

His 32 home runs this season are in a four-way tie for 10th place, matching the number hit by Uggla (2008), Mike Jacobs (2008) and Mike Lowell (2003).

Stanton is already responsible for Nos. 2 and 3 on said list, having hit 37 homers in 2012 and 34 in 2011.

It’s seemingly only a matter of time before he takes the franchise record from retired outfielder Gary Sheffield, who hit 42 home runs in 1996.

Ultimately, the only obstacle to Stanton achieving every one of his franchise’s significant home run records is the possibility of a trade.

With the Marlins sitting at 62-62 and no longer taking the mindset of a rebuilding club, all is quiet on the Stanton trade-talk front for the first time in years.

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