CLEVELAND — With one more game before the All-Star break, Giancarlo Stanton is finding his groove with the Yankees on the field and off after an entire career spent with the Marlins.
The way the Yankees have each other’s backs really impresses Stanton and their manner of coming up with wins like the 5-4 victory over the Indians on Saturday night at Progressive Field.
“This team has a really good feel for the game, and it is a really good clubhouse,’’ Stanton told The Post.
“I try not to let things surprise me in general,’’ Stanton said. “I knew there would be things I didn’t think about that would happen, things that I did think about would happen. You leave that room for trial and error. It’s a lot what I figured and a lot of surprises.”
He could not have envisioned the happenings Saturday night that included him being called out on a strikeout when he swung at a pitch from Mike Clevinger and the ball hit his hand and went back to the screen. Manager Aaron Boone went ballistic, thinking the ball had hit his bat and hand, and was ejected in the sixth inning.
“I punched it,’’ Stanton said. “It hit my hand, I thought it might have caught the bat also, with what I felt on my hand, that’s what I thought.’’
As for Boone’s blowup, Stanton smiled and said, “I like it. I know he gets fired up, you guys may not, but I know it.’’
For his part Boone admitted, “It looks like they got the call right. I thought it was a foul ball. I thought I had gotten word it had hit hand and bat.’’
After the Indians scored two in the bottom of the sixth to tie the score 4-4 on a ground ball single to third by Brandon Guyer, Austin Romine led off the seventh with a double to right. Guyer botched the pickup as Romine raced to third and the relay wound up in the Indians dugout, allowing Romine to score.
“Some days we are going to do the six-home-runs thing and some we figure out ways to grind out at-bats,’’ said Stanton on a night Didi Gregorius hit a three-run home run in the first inning and Bird crushed a solo shot in the sixth. “You have to see how the game is developing and all it takes is a pitch or two to change the course of the game.’’
The Yankees are 62-32 and in the race, something Stanton desperately wanted to join after being marooned with the Marlins.
After a slow start, Stanton has a .275 batting average, six points over his career mark, owning a .372/.430/.628 slash line with five home runs and 13 RBIs over the past 19 games.
What is Stanton looking forward to most in the second half for himself and for the Yankees?
“Just keep playing hard,’’ he told me. “We’ve had a weird schedule. It’s the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Doubleheaders. You look at the standings and teams have four, five games more than us and we’re halfway through it’s like how is that possible?’’
Stanton, with his 23 homers, is keeping his goals simple.
“Keep it going and keep getting better,’’ he said. “Take us into the home stretch.’’
Then when October comes the fun of being a Yankee really begins.
Stanton said wearing pinstripes has been everything he thought it would be.
“He is all-in,’’ Brett Gardner said. “I mean, all-in. This guy’s work ethic is unbelievable and it has been that way since the first days of spring training.’’
Gardner told a story of how after a game in spring training Stanton got one of those really big buckets the team uses for batting practice, went in the cage by himself and worked on his swing.
“He used up two buckets of balls and put every one of them on the tee by himself,’’ Gardner said.
Stanton lined a 101-mph single Saturday night.
“I haven’t torpedoed, broken that many bats, so that is good,’’ he said.
It’s all good.
