Giancarlo Stanton wants to turn the page on everything that's happened to him this season, everything he's struggled with, everything he's pushed against these empty weeks.
Only here it was, at the end of another game, with the night-club fog the Marlins celebrate victories with all around Sunday's clubhouse _ and everything still looked the same around Stanton's locker. And felt the same.
"I'm mad about what's going on, of course," he said. "I'm just trying not to be miserable. That's where I don't want to go."
Stanton has spilled his blood on the field after a bad beaning, and had his insides spilled in various other injuries in his Marlins time. But these words are as close as he ever comes to spilling his heart. It's as much as he lets anyone inside his thoughts.
What's going on with Stanton, of course, is that nothing is going on. He's hitting .202 this season _ and that's the most positive way to frame it. He batted .173 in May. He has one hit and seven strikeouts in 14 at-bats in June. He has two home runs and three RBIs in the past month.
He has been dropped to fifth in the batting order, something that would have been inconceivable a couple of months ago, and the question becomes whether he'll drop lower if this continues.
The Marlins, after all, have six regulars batting over .300. They remain three games over .500 (30-27) even without production from Stanton or the drug-suspended Dee Gordon _ two players everyone thought were the central parts of their offense.
The cart, in other words, is pulling the horse. And no one knows it more than Stanton.
"What I'm trying to do is not think too much about it," he said. "But you think about it. You can't help but think about it. There's no getting around that."
Baseball is the longest of seasons, and you only have to look across the clubhouse from Stanton at Marcell Ozuna to remember that. Forget that Ozuna was a question mark this spring after being trade bait over the winter.
Now he's the center of this offense. He's the most consistent batter, the clean-up hitter, the kind of player who with Christian Yelich was to build support around Stanton's power.
Long season, remember. Amazingly long if it continues like this for Stanton. But it's long enough, too, for Stanton to discover his swing, for everyone to re-discover why the Marlins gave him that $325-million contract.
This is the one area the Marlins' lack of support in South Florida helps. Struggle like this in a baseball capital and you're a daily story.
Stanton sat out Sunday's game as an injury hedge after missing two weeks recently, not because of this slump, manager Don Mattingly said. That gave him two days off before Tuesday's series opener in Minnesota.
But let's be honest. If Stanton was Stanton, if he was hitting as planned, there would have been a place for him in the lineup. As he said, "It's not like I'm tired. I just had as week off [with the side injury]."
The alarming part for Stanton is how easily he's missing the ball. He's striking out in 40 percent of his at-bats. That's up from the 31 and 34 percent the previous two years. Experience and plate discipline were to send strike-outs the other way.
"I'm trying not to over-think everything," Stanton said.
Through the winning fog of the clubhouse late Sunday afternoon, Jose Fernandez came, shirtless and smiling and singing a song. He'd just won his eighth straight start. He's an astounding 23-1 at Marlins Park.
"Great day, great day," he said as he went.
Stanton was supposed to be in the middle of this kind of day. Instead, he sat in the night-club fog after a victory, looking at his phone, in a season that isn't what anyone expected.
It's still early June. They're still only four games out in the National League East. There's still a lot of season left to change the developing theme. This is said to Stanton.
The player everyone is waiting to hit says only, "Yeah, I know that."
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