Giancarlo Stanton is the master of hitting beautiful home runs

Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. There are all kinds of stories, rumors, game coverage and Vines of dudes getting hit in the beans every day. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s okay, though, we’re going to do the heavy lifting for you each morning, and find the things you need to see from within the SB Nation baseball network, as well as from elsewhere. Please hold your applause until the end, or at least until after you subscribe to the newsletter.

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Yoenis Cespedes is an extremely impressive home run hitter, and he proved it on two major occasions back in 2013 and 2014 when he won the Home Run Derby in both of those years. He slugged 62 dingers in the process of winning both. That is extremely impressive, but Giancarlo Stanton managed to turn both the 2016 Home Run Derby and Petco Park into his very own playground by not only winning the Derby, but hitting a whopping 61 homers in the process — just one less than the 62 it took for Cespedes to win two Derbies.

Granted, comparing the formats that Cespedes and Stanton won in would be like comparing Granny Smith apples to Red Delicious apples, but the performance that Stanton put on last night was magisterial. You could argue that there isn’t anybody better in baseball right now at hitting big, booming, picturesque homers than Stanton, and he proved it last night with some of the shots that he took on Monday night in San Diego.

Stanton hit homers into the upper deck. He hit them into the batter’s eye. He hit them over the batter’s eye. He hit them into the deepest depths of Petco Park. He even hit a couple of them completely out of Petco Park. If you were even in the general proximity of downtown San Diego on Monday night, you had a chance at catching a 2016 Home Run Derby ball off of the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. He may not be the league leader in home runs right now, but Stanton is definitely leading the universe in style points when it comes to smashing dingers.

• Oh hey, the All-Star Game is tonight! This seems like a good time to figure out if an all-time All-Star team could go 162-0.


• This also seems like a good time to determine who’s in line for awards at baseball’s midpoint — specifically in the American League.


• The National League (who’s on a three-game losing streak in The Game That Counts) will be missing a handful of top starters, and Jake Arrieta could be one of them.


• David Ortiz will start his final All-Star game as the cleanup hitter for the AL. It’s the All-Star Game and it’s David Ortiz, so you can’t really argue against it.


• As far as the Home Run Derby is concerned, we can’t forget about Mark Trumbo, who showed off some prodigious power of his own during Monday night’s Derby.


• Corey Seager also deserves some praise for showing what he could do with a bat and a baseball on yesterday evening.


• While the rest of the field was mashing moonshots, Wil Myers was busy getting hit by his own brother in the Home Run Derby.


• The Annual Celebrity Softball Game is basically #WeirdBaseball with the volume turned up to 11, and things certainly got weird at the end of this year’s game.


• Jonathan Lucroy has been the subject of trade rumors for a long time now, and trade talks between the Rangers and Brewers may be heating up again.