A key to that second half? Stanton closed off his batting stance in
June, moving his front foot to cover more of the plate and keep him from
chasing pitches out of the zone.
"It put him in a good Roger Maris Youth Jersey position to hit," Marlins assistant hitting coach Frank Menechino said.
"It put him in position to get out of the way and gave him confidence.
Gave him something less to worry about. Before we did that, he was
stepping in the bucket and we couldn't stop it. He tried to fix it on
his own. He tried to do a couple of different things, this and
that."Stanton hit 12 homers while posting an eye-popping 1.138 OPS in
July, then somehow outdid himself in August. Ronald Herrera Youth Jersey The slugger launched 18 home runs, matching an MLB record that had
stood for 80 years for the most ever in that month.
During that stretch, Stanton also set the Marlins' single-season home
run record, passing the 42 hit by Gary Sheffield in 1996. All in all,
Stanton slugged 38 homers after July 1, finishing the season with 59.
Only nine other times in baseball history had a player hit that many
home runs in a season, Ronald Torreyes Youth Jersey though nobody had done so since 2001, when Barry Bonds hit 73 and Sammy
Sosa had 64.
The others? Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and Mark McGwire.
"Those are all the guys I looked up to," Stanton said in late September.
"I was able to see a bunch of them from the stands, and it's just crazy
to be in that company. It doesn't sink in yet. It doesn't make sense
really yet, but it's really cool. It's everything I've worked for, and
it's something really cool."
