August 20, 2022: Giancarlo Stanton goes down swinging in minor-league rehab game

When major-league stars head to the minors for injury rehabilitation assignments, they don’t always find the going easy.

Giancarlo Stanton furnished one example in August 2022, when the New York Yankees sent the former National League Most Valuable Player to the Somerset (New Jersey) Patriots of the Double-A Eastern League to get back into game shape after an Achilles tendon injury. Less than a month earlier, he’d started for the American League in the All-Star Game and hit a home run. But in his first game back, on August 20, he went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts as Somerset fell, 5-3, to the Bowie (Maryland) Baysox.

On August 20 the EL’s 12 teams were deep into the second half of their schedule. Bowie, an Orioles affiliate, had gone 27-41 in the first half to finish last in the Southwest Division.1 They stepped up their game in the latter part of the season. As of August 20, they were 28-15 in the second half, just one game behind the first-place Erie SeaWolves, a Detroit Tigers farm team.2 They had also beaten Somerset in two straight games.3

Somerset, a New York Yankees farm team, had won the Northeast Division first-half title with a 44-25 record. Despite their struggles in the series against Bowie, they were bidding to win again in the second half. Their 24-18 record placed them second in the division, 1½ games behind the Portland Sea Dogs, a Boston Red Sox affiliate.

Bowie manager Kyle Moore started righty Justin Armbruester on the mound on the 20th. The 23-year-old Armbruester, in his second pro season, had been a 12th-round pick of the Orioles in the 2021 draft out of the University of New Mexico. He split 2022 between Aberdeen of the High-A South Atlantic League and Bowie and entered the game with a 3-0 record at Bowie after going 2-1 in 12 starts at Aberdeen. In late July, the Baltimore Sun listed him among the top pitching prospects in the Orioles organization, noting that he “has risen swiftly this season” while posting “gaudy strikeout numbers.” The story also noted that Armbruester had held opponents to three earned runs or fewer in 16 of his 18 games to that time.4

Somerset manager Dan Fiorito gave the ball to starter Randy Vásquez – also a 23-year-old righty, but playing his fourth pro season in the Yankees organization.5 After splitting 2021 between three teams, including a four-game trial at Somerset, the Dominican-born pitcher spent all of 2022 at the Double-A level. He entered the game with a record of 1-4.

The starting lineups included prospects on both sides. For instance, the Baltimore Sun singled out Bowie designated hitter Maverick Handley and second baseman Connor Norby at season’s end for their strong minor-league performances.6 MLB.com evaluated the Yankees’ prospects a few days before the game, and three of the top five started for Somerset that day – shortstop Anthony Volpe, catcher Austin Wells, and center fielder Everson Pereira.7

But the biggest name in either lineup belonged to Stanton, starting at designated hitter and hitting second. Thirty-two-year-old Stanton had twice led the NL in home runs as a Miami Marlin. In 2017 he’d won the NL MVP Award after hitting 59 homers and driving in 132 runs. The 2022 All-Star Game on July 19 marked his fifth All-Star appearance. Since then, however, he’d injured his left Achilles tendon8 and had been sent to Somerset to take a few swings before returning to the Yankees.9

Somerset was a destination of choice for rehabbing Yankees. The list of players with previous big-league experience who appeared for the 2022 Patriots also included pitchers Zack Britton, Aroldis Chapman, Domingo Germán, and Luis Severino. Another Patriot, Kaleb Cowart, had played parts of five seasons with the Los Angeles Angels as an infielder before converting to pitching.10

As of the end of the 2024 season, 26 members of the 2022 Bowie team had played in the majors, either before or after their time with the Baysox. Top prospects Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson spent time with the team en route to the majors, though neither was there on August 20. As of 2024, three players who appeared for Bowie against Somerset had reached the major leagues: Norby, center fielder Colton Cowser, and shortstop Joey Ortiz.

With 3,987 fans in the stands at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie, the game started under cloudy skies shortly after 6:30 P.M. Stanton grounded to third base in his first-inning at-bat. The next two Patriots, Wells and Pereira, collected a walk and a double to put runners on second and third. But right fielder Elijah Dunham foul-tipped a strikeout into the catcher’s glove.

The home team jumped in front quickly with a first-inning run, scored on singles by the first three hitters – Cowser, Ortiz, and Norby.11 A line-drive double play ended the inning. Cowser, the Orioles’ first-round pick in the June 2021 amateur draft, hit .341 in 49 games at Bowie; Norby hit .298 and Ortiz .269.12

As Armbruester held the Patriots off the scoreboard – including a strikeout of Stanton in the top of the third – Bowie’s 1-through-3 hitters struck again. Cowser walked, Ortiz grounded a single into left field, and Norby ripped a long double to left field to score both for a 3-0 lead.13

A single and a walk loaded the bases with one out for right fielder John Rhodes. Second baseman Jesús Bastidas fielded Rhodes’ grounder and threw wildly, allowing Norby to score for a 4-0 lead.14 Vasquez got the next hitter on a foul pop and was pulled in favor of reliever Steven Jennings, who closed out the inning with a strikeout.

In the fourth inning, Jennings retired Cowser and Ortiz but walked Norby, who then stole second base. Left fielder Hudson Haskin’s groundball single into left scored Norby, running Bowie’s advantage to 5-0.

The Patriots broke up Armbruester’s shutout in the fifth, as first baseman Mickey Gasper hit his eighth home run of the season, a solo shot to right field. Armbruester retired the next two hitters to close out the inning, including a second strikeout of Stanton. He left the game after five innings, having allowed two hits and one run, walked three, and struck out four.

The Patriots’ offense awoke in the sixth against reliever Jensen Elliott. A single, a walk, and a fielder’s choice put runners on the corners with two out. Left fielder Brandon Lockridge’s grounder to third ended the threat. In the bottom half, Norby got things stirring again: His third hit of the game, followed by a hit batsman, put runners on first and second with two out. Third baseman César Prieto’s grounder to shortstop closed out the inning with Bowie still leading 5-1.

Eric Wagaman pinch-singled for Stanton in the seventh, but Somerset could do nothing with it. They fared better in the eighth against Bowie’s third pitcher, Conner Loeprich. Dunham walked, took second on a grounder, and advanced to third on a wild pitch. Lockridge’s single into center scored him, making the score 5-2. In the bottom half, Somerset reliever Cowart finally achieved the challenging feat of retiring Cowser, Ortiz, and Norby in order, on a strikeout and two flies to right.

With Loeprich still on the mound, Somerset came out swinging in the ninth. Singles by Gasper, Wagaman, and Wells loaded the bases with one out. After a swinging strikeout, Dunham lined a single into right, scoring one run, reloading the bases, and moving the potential tying run into scoring position. But third baseman Andrés Chaparro capped an 0-for-4 day with a fly to left fielder Haskin, enabling Bowie to escape with a 5-3 win.

The Baysox’ win lifted them into first place, and they finished the second half of the season in a tie for first with the Erie SeaWolves.15 Erie was awarded the playoff spot for the second-half winner, though, because the SeaWolves beat the Baysox in their season-long head-to-head matchup.16 For the full season, the Baysox finished in fourth place in the six-team Southwest Division at 68-70, 12 games behind first-place Erie.

The Patriots finished the second half in second place, but ended the full season in first in the Northeast Division with an 83-53 record, 6½ games ahead of the Hartford Yard Goats. Somerset and Erie met in the EL’s postseason playoff finals. Somerset clinched the championship in memorable fashion on September 28, winning 15-0. Vasquez, who closed with a 2-7 record in the regular season, and reliever Carson Coleman combined on a no-hitter.17

It was a better ending than Somerset’s former DH enjoyed. After hitting just .211 in the regular season, Stanton hit a combined .188 (6-for-32) in the AL Division Series and Championship Series, with the Yankees swept by the Houston Astros in the latter.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Harrison Golden and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Giancarlo Stanton, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but MiLB.com, the official website of Minor League Baseball, published a box score. The box score includes an inning-by-inning, play-by-play account that provided much of the detail for this story.

Notes

1 Eastern League standings as printed in LNP (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), June 29, 2022: A18. The author compared these standings to those published in the Meriden (Connecticut) Record-Journal, June 29, 2022: B4, to confirm that the standings in the Lancaster newspaper reflected the end of the full first half of play.

2 Eastern League standings as printed in the Waterville (Maine) Morning Sentinel, August 21, 2022: C5. Note that these standings – while printed on Sunday, August 21 – are complete only through the games of Friday, August 19, which means they reflect where Somerset and Bowie stood coming into the game of August 20.

3 “Bowie Takes Third Straight from Somerset, Moves into Tie for First Place,” MiLB.com, August 20, 2022, https://www.milb.com/bowie/news/bowie-takes-third-straight-from-somerset-move-into-tie-for-first-place.

4 Andy Kostka, “The Top Prospects at Each Position So Far This Season,” Baltimore Sun, July 27, 2022: D1. The story did not give Armbruester’s strikeout totals to that time. For the full season, he struck out 126 batters in 117 innings.

5 This does not include the 2020 minor-league season, which was canceled because of the global COVID pandemic. Vasquez had pitched professionally in the 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022 seasons.

6 Andy Kostka, “Farm Will Soon Yield a Bountiful Harvest,” Baltimore Sun, September 21, 2022: D1. Handley, typically a catcher, started at designated hitter on August 20.

7 Bryan Hoch, “Here’s the Yankees’ New Top 30 Prospects List,” MLB.com, August 16, 2022, https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-top-30-prospects-2022-midseason-rerank.

8 Pete Caldera (USA Today Network), “Carpenter Suffers Foot Fracture at the Plate Against the Mariners,” Binghamton (New York) Press & Sun-Bulletin, August 10, 2022: 1B.

9 Stanton played two games with Somerset. He went hitless with three strikeouts in seven at-bats.

10 According to Baseball-Reference, Cowart played exclusively as a pitcher in 2022 after splitting his time between third base, shortstop, and the pitcher’s mound in 2019, his most recent professional season. Cowart split the 2022 season between the Rookie and Double-A levels, going 2-0 with a 3.86 ERA in 16 relief appearances. It was his final season in pro baseball.

11 “Bowie Takes Third Straight from Somerset, Moves into Tie for First Place.”

12 Cowser and Norby also began the season with stints at High-A Aberdeen, and all three players earned brief promotions to Triple-A Norfolk.

13 “Bowie Takes Third Straight from Somerset, Moves into Tie for First Place” (box score).

14 “Bowie Takes Third Straight from Somerset, Moves into Tie for First Place” (box score).

15 Eastern League standings as printed in the Waterville Morning Sentinel, September 19, 2022: C2.

16 Glenn Jordan, “Red-Hot Sea Dogs Ready for Playoffs,” Portland (Maine) Press Herald, September 20, 2022: D1. Erie and Bowie played each other 18 times in 2022, and Erie won 11 of those games.

17 “Somerset Patriots Win Eastern League Championship with 15-0 No-Hitter Shutout.” MiLB.com, September 28, 2022, https://www.milb.com/somerset/news/somerset-patriots-win-eastern-league-championship-with-15-0-no-hitter-shutout.