In what appears to be a major blow to the Miami Marlins playoff aspirations, the team announced that star outfielder Giancarlo Stanton will miss the remainder of the 2016 season with a serious groin injury.
Stanton was having a down season, hitting .244 with 25 homers and 70 RBI.
Though, this is still some horrible news for a Marlins team that entered Sunday's action a half game out of the final wild card spot in the National League. With Stanton sidelined for the season, Ichiro Suzuki, the newest member of the 3,000-hit club, will likely see a ton more action in right field. Ichiro is hitting .319 on the season, including a .350 clip with a .500 BAbip against lefties on the year.
That's where we want to focus on this otherwise bad news for the Marlins.
From a fantasy perspective, this means that Ichiro will now slot in as a near every day player. If you had Stanton in redraft, the best possible scenario would be to pick Ichiro up off the waiver wire. That will enable you to fill in Stanton's spot immediately.
While Ichiro has done nothing of substance from a power perspective (zero homers, 13 extra-base hits), he is hitting 75 points higher than Stanton and posting an on-base percentage that's 60 points higher than his teammate.