Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton surely looks like he was carved out of marble. The guy has a physique most athletes would envy. But as impressive as he looks, that hasn’t exactly translated to being game-ready whenever the team needs him.

Notably, Stanton’s battle with tennis elbow is nothing new. He already missed the first 70 games of the 2025 season because of it, and now, just as the regular season is about to get underway, the issue seems to have flared up again. And with his ongoing injury troubles, it’s no surprise some Yankees fans are getting restless.

Adding fuel to the fire, Craig Carton of WFAN didn’t hold back. He suggested that while Stanton might be too “soft” for the grind of baseball, the real responsibility falls on the Yankees for not getting him fully fit during the offseason.

“He’s so soft. For a big guy who is really muscular and strong, can he be any stronger?” Carton asked via WFAN.

Well, despite the imposing stance of Stanton, he’s been dealing with tennis elbow since 2024, and it just won’t seem to go away. When he finally returned around mid-2025, there was real optimism that he was ready to power through the rest of the season. Instead, his latest comments about his health raised even more red flags.

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“I can’t open a bottle,” Stanton admitted. “I can’t open a bag of chips … a bag of anything. That’s the way it is.”

Unfortunately, that’s where things stand. And naturally, it makes you wonder how he’s supposed to handle the 162-game grind of a regular season if something as simple as opening a snack bag is a struggle. Expectedly, Carton didn’t exactly hold back. He labeled Stanton too soft for baseball and even mocked him on-air by trying to open a bag of chips himself, jokingly asking if he was “more athletic” than the Yankees’ DH.

But beyond the trolling, Carton raised a bigger question: Shouldn’t the New York Yankees have handled this differently? Well, he argued that if surgery was an option, why not do it last October? Miss April and May, come back strong in June, and avoid dragging this out.

“I don’t need him in April — have the surgery in October and be ready in June. They didn’t. That’s malfeasance to your fan base,” Carton said.

Sure, fans hope on players like Stanton and not offering him a fit every year despite having the chance looks so wrong to the Bleacher Creatures. Considering Stanton has averaged around 60 missed games per season, we also wonder why the Yankees didn’t take a more aggressive route to fix the issue once and for all. And why not? Having a fully healthy Stanton by midseason would’ve been far better than rolling into Opening Day with lingering concerns.

But as some former players have pointed out in the past, this kind of handling of injuries isn’t exactly new for the Yankees.

The Yankees are no strangers to mishandling injuries

This isn’t the first time the Yankees have been criticized for how they handle injuries.

Remember Clint Frazier? His time in New York was riddled with post-concussion issues. Later on, Frazier openly shared his frustration, saying the organization didn’t properly “catch” or manage what he was dealing with. That disconnect ultimately played a role in how his Yankees stint ended.

Then there’s the more recent case of Anthony Volpe. He struggled noticeably last season, but it wasn’t until the year wrapped up that it came out he’d been playing through a significant shoulder injury. The result? Surgery, and now there’s uncertainty about whether he’ll even be ready for Opening Day.

So when it comes to Giancarlo Stanton’s situation, it’s not just about one player being hurt again. For some fans and critics, it feels like a pattern. The injuries themselves may be unavoidable at times, but the way they’re handled is what raises eyebrows.

Nevertheless, at this point, it almost feels like the Yankees might be setting themselves up for their own problems.