NEW YORK — When Giancarlo Stanton steps to the plate, the crowd holds its breath waiting for a ball to disappear into the seats. That is his reputation. But the start he has put together in 2026 is something far quieter, and historically much rarer.
Stanton has collected multiple hits in each of the Yankees’ first four games of the season. He is the first Yankees player to accomplish that since Alfonso Soriano did it to open the 2003 campaign more than two decades ago. Soriano’s streak eventually reached six games. The Yankees are watching closely to see if Stanton can get there.
Not your typical Stanton stat line
The numbers look almost foreign for a man known for tape-measure home runs. Through four games, Stanton is 8-for-16, a .500 batting average. He has one home run in that stretch. The rest of his hits are a double and six singles.
That is not a typo. Six singles. For Giancarlo Stanton.
The balls are leaving his bat with the same Stantonian force. Several have registered exit velocities well above 100 mph. They just are not catching enough air to clear a fence. He has two RBIs and has scored twice in the four-game stretch, with zero walks and four strikeouts.
The quirky wrinkle: Stanton has gone exactly 2-for-4 in all four games. Same line, four times in a row.
A spring that gave the Yankees real hope
This hot start did not come out of nowhere. Stanton had one of his strongest springs in recent memory heading into 2026, and the Yankees were careful not to oversell it given his well-documented injury history.
Manager Aaron Boone said it plainly after watching Stanton light up Statcast in the final week of camp, hitting nearly everything above 100 mph: “If we can just bottle this up and move it north.”
Stanton’s spring debut in Tampa on March 3 included a 114.3 mph single to left off a live arm, which he called “a nice prototype first day.” He acknowledged what batting practice machines cannot replicate.
“Nothing, at the end of the day, is like seeing a live arm,” Stanton said. “Being in a position in a game with fans, that extra, you can’t simulate. You can visualize it, but until you do it, it’s different.”
Teammate Cody Bellinger noticed immediately that something was different when the regular season arrived.
“He’s locked in,” Bellinger said before the Yankees wrapped up their series against the Giants. “I feel like he’s been locked in all spring and carried it over into the regular season. Just the quality at-bat and hitting the ball hard.”
The feat that connects Stanton and Soriano
Alfonso Soriano’s 2003 streak of multi-hit games to open a season is the benchmark Stanton is now chasing. Soriano at that point was a dynamic offensive force at second base for the Yankees, coming off back-to-back 30-homer, 30-steal seasons. He was exactly the kind of hitter you would expect to rattle off that kind of streak.
Stanton, at age 36, managing bilateral epicondylitis that still prevents him from performing simple daily tasks without discomfort, is a far less likely candidate to be the one who finally matched it. Yet here he is.
When he homered in Game 2 at Oracle Park, Stanton and Aaron Judge each went deep in the sixth inning, marking the 60th time the two sluggers have homered in the same game. The Yankees are 53-7 in those games. That number tells you everything about what a healthy Stanton means to this lineup.
Giancarlo Stanton: First four games of the 2026 season
Source: MLB Statcast / Elias Sports Bureau
| Game | Date | Opponent | AB | H | HR | RBI | Notes |
| 1 | Mar 27 | @ San Francisco | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | RBI single off Logan Webb (114.4 mph) |
| 2 | Mar 28 | @ San Francisco | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Solo HR; bat flip moment |
| 3 | Mar 29 | @ San Francisco | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Two singles |
| 4 | Mar 30 | @ Seattle | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Double + single |
| Total | 16 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 8-for-16 (.500 avg) |
Managing pain while making history
The injury context is impossible to ignore. Stanton missed the Yankees’ first 70 games in 2025 because of tennis elbow in both arms. He acknowledged during the offseason that another full rest period did not heal those elbows.
In his own words: “I can’t open a bag of chips. A bag of anything.”
Despite that, he slashed .273/.350/.594 with 24 home runs in just 77 games last season. When he plays, the Yankees win at a dramatically higher rate. The challenge has always been keeping him on the field.
He entered 2026 managing his elbows on a daily basis. The Yankees have been careful about his workload. But through four games, his bat has not shown any signs of limitation. Exit velocity numbers from Opening Day in San Francisco included a 114.4 mph single off Giants ace Logan Webb, the kind of contact that reminds everyone what Stanton is capable of when right.
What a full season of Stanton could mean
The Yankees entered 2026 with modest fan optimism after a World Series loss to the Dodgers in 2024 and another frustrating exit in 2025. A healthy, productive Stanton changes the calculus considerably.
He reached 24 home runs in only 77 games last year. Over a full 162-game season, that pace projects to roughly 50. The Yankees have not had a player hit 50 home runs in a season since Alex Rodriguez hit 54 in 2007. Judge came close in 2022 with his record-setting 62. Nobody is projecting a 50-homer season from a 36-year-old with chronic elbow problems. But four games in, Stanton is doing something no Yankee has done in 23 years. That alone is worth paying attention to.
Can Stanton stay healthy and carry the Yankees to the elusive championship?
