Giancarlo Stanton lands (body painted) on the Sports Illustrated Cover

Two Giancarlo Stanton posts in a row! The guy is everywhere right now, and for good reason. The highest paid athlete in sports – just entering his prime years – set to attack home run records down in South Beach. Not too sure how we feel about the body paint cover, but it’s unique. And we can’t turn away from a guy we like so much making the cover.

Stanton’s cover story is written by Ben Reiter, and he actually talks about being angered by the initial record offering by the Marlins.

“I think they were thinking I was going to be like, ‘Oh, well, sign me up!'” Stanton says. He wasn’t.

“I put the paper down, and I was like, ‘I’ll tell you right now that numbers don’t mean anything,'” Stanton recalls. “‘If you think you’re just going to pay me a bunch of money, and I’m going to go live my lavish lifestyle, come to the park and get my ass kicked every day, and go back to my lavish lifestyle, you got another thing coming.’ I said that straight to their faces. I was angered

You’ve got to respect the guy and believe him when he says that. While the money probably didn’t hurt their chances at getting this done, three main reasons for Stanton signing for 13 years were as follows:

1. Stanton loves Miami — “I could go anywhere … but if we win here, I’d rather be here over any place, any other city.”

2. Stanton believes in the Marlins’ young core of players — “Never are we going to be the biggest market, have the highest payroll, none of that … And the players that we have, they’re still not the biggest names, most people aren’t going to know who they are. But in terms of pure talent, they’re there.”

3. Stanton believes the team’s days of gutting the roster of talent are over — “Why would you give me so much money and not try to win? … What on earth is the point of that? They have to be serious about winning going forward. There’s no other logical explanation.”

The Marlins are going to turn things around and prove to be a viable baseball organization yet. We like them, we believe in them. There’s already talk on Sirius XM radio that Stanton could receive ‘Barry Bonds treatment’ in not getting pitched to by opposing teams if guys like Mike Morse and Marcel Ozuna don’t do their jobs, but don’t worry about that. Some poor sucker on the mound will make a mistake they don’t live to tell about some 40 or so times this season and Stanton will cement himself as the game’s premiere player. That’s our prediction.