Stanton gets another day off 'to regroup'

KANSAS CITY -- With an off-day looming on Thursday, Marlins manager Mike Redmond decided to give slumping Giancarlo Stanton a day off Wednesday so he could get a two-day mental breather.

"It's not an injury thing," Redmond said. "Just giving him a couple of days to regroup."

Stanton arrived at Kauffman Stadium on Wednesday with a .237 batting average, 13 homers and 35 RBIs. He's tracking well below last year, when he hit .290 with 37 homers and 86 RBIs.

"You've got to find a happy medium between clearing your head and finding something productive out of it," Stanton said. "I've still got to be ready to potentially help us win later in the game."

Stanton can't find any one concrete reason why his offensive numbers have dwindled.

"You might tell yourself not to think too much, and maybe you are," Stanton said. "You might say you're not trying too hard, and maybe you are. There are so many things that can spiral out of a situation like this. And when you've never been in a situation like this, it's a little more difficult to get out of it.

"When you've had all the checkpoints that you've built for yourself in your professional career, and all of those have failed, you have to find new ones."

Stanton said the positive he can take out of his current situation is that when he's hitting again, he will be able to look back on how he battled through adversity.

"I usually like growing experiences, but this one I don't like," Stanton said. "But yeah, when I look back on this, as annoying as it is, hopefully this time is the only time it will be this long. You just try to find some positive out of it."