The fact that his home is there isn’t the only reason Giancarlo Stanton has expressed his preference for playing on the West Coast, if the Miami Marlins really intend to trade him and his high salary. A look at his career statistics against clubs in the National League West indicates that he has enjoyed tremendous success, leading one to imagine even better offensive totals if he faced those clubs more than six times per season.

Stanton has been mentioned frequently in business talks as new owner partners Derek Jeter and Bruce Sherman have expressed their intention to rebuild. The pair may have several hurdles to obtaining return value for the 2017 NL MVP, an average salary of $ 30 million a year through 2028 and a full no-trade clause.

Needless to say, several teams hoping to compete next season have shown interest in Stanton, despite his contract. After all, he ended up just one dinger from eclipsing the rare sixty home run mark, as well as leading the majors in RBIs and slugging percentage.

Who knows how much better they might have totaled those numbers if he’d played most of his contests on the opposite side of the Rocky Mountains? In just 1,000 games, he’s hit 267 home runs, or one in four.

When you isolate their performance against opponents in the West, those numbers become even more impressive. In 218 battles against those five clubs, Stanton has gone deep 77 times or once every two and a half games. Given that discrepancy, he would easily have eclipsed the sixties mark had he played in the NL West.

That said, his most notable suitors so far have been the Red Sox and Cardinals, but Stanton has stated that he would prefer a California team over Boston and St. Louis. Los Angeles, Stanton’s hometown, has two clubs that intend to compete for a pennant and have the financial means to take on the contract.

The slugger obviously wants to play for a contender, so he’s likely going west. Three of the five teams that qualified for the postseason in the National League last year were from the Division West, the Dodgers, the Rockies and the Diamondbacks.

However, it is one of the two clubs that did not make the playoffs that could be the most likely destination for Stanton. The San Francisco Giants, despite finishing last in 2017, have three World Series Championships this decade and are certainly looking forward to competing next year.

Although they missed the playoffs entirely last season, the Giants won it all in the even-numbered years earlier this decade. As we approach the final even-year-to-twenties, San Francisco has to be thinking about how much Stanton would mean to its odds of winning another even-year ring.