Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue from Kevin Gausman or perhaps it was a fact of where Giancarlo Stanton is as a hitter these days.

But when discussing his latest dominant outing against the Yankees, Gausman mentioned who he did not want to let beat him and Stanton’s name was omitted.

Instead, Gausman’s focus centered on not letting Aaron Judge or Gleyber Torres get to him while pitching with a one-run lead. It is an understandable omission considering Stanton is a .188 hitter these days with 10 games remaining and someone who is owed $127 million over the next three seasons on the massive contract he signed with the Marlins after the 2014 season.

“To be honest going into the game, especially once we got the lead, there's certain guys you kind of pick to kind of nibble around and obviously I wasn't going to let Aaron Judge or Gleyber Torres be the reason why they tied it up,” Gausman said. “Certain games you're not going to do that but I just felt confident with what we were doing against everybody else that I wasn't gonna let those guys be the difference maker."

Stanton is hardly a difference maker so it may be easy to see why Gausman did not mention him. The average dropped to that point on the one-year anniversary of Aaron Judge reaching 60 homers and Stanton hitting a game-ending grand slam to beat the Pirates.

“Terrible,” Stanton said in describing his season after stranding five baserunners in his first three at-bats.

Stanton’s latest bad night occurred after he hit into a pair of double plays where his lack of ability to run out of the box was rather noticeable. The latest bad night dropped him to 2-for-39 with 17 strikeouts in his past 11 games and to .089 with 24 strikeouts in 15 games this month.

“I’m not putting the ball in play hard enough multiple times,” Stanton said. “I’ve put some hard balls in play, but they’ve showed no results.”

No results are a common theme for Stanton’s season most of the way. While he can make teammates awestruck by reaching the third deck like on July 8 or when he hit his 400th homer two weeks ago against Detroit, it mostly has been a series of empty at-bats which make anyone wonder how it got to this point.

Stanton has 24 homers in 97 games, a similar rate to the 35 in 139 games two years ago or the 31 homers in 110 games last season when he missed over a month with an Achilles’ injury.

While there may be the perception Stanton is not putting in the work, it is hardly the case, a fact he noted and a fact teammates have mentioned at various points.

“There’s a lot of things I’ve got to work and adjust on,” Stanton said. “But if you guys think I’m just showing up and going out there and not working, then don’t know what to tell you.”

While various advanced numbers are in Stanton’s favor, the results hardly lie, especially when they are blared across the scoreboard and combined with how much longer Stanton is signed for.

“There’s obviously a lot of conversation to be had there,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Hopefully having a good winter to grow from this and to make whatever adjustments to put he and us in a better situation heading into next year, where we get the more consistent Giancarlo that I believe is still in there.”

It may still be in there for Stanton, who showed he is capable with solid numbers in 2018 and a bunch of big homers down the stretch in 2021 and several big games in the postseason.

Now, he is among the symbols for the Yankees facing an elimination number of three games for their highly unlikely postseason bid and scrambling to avoid their first losing season since 1992.

And while the Yankees will face several offseason needs, Stanton returning to some semblance of 2018 in his age 35-season is among the more pressing things they would like to see occur along with him avoiding another lengthy stay on the injured list like the two months he missed with a hamstring injury sustained while legging out a double on April 15.