There hadn’t been enough time to wipe the blood from Giancarlo Stanton’s face before he was lifted onto a golf cart after a Mike Fiers fastball crumpled his cheek on Sept. 11. But before he was taken away for treatment, Stanton reached out a hand to his father, who happened to be in Milwaukee that night and had made his way to the field. The gesture was seemingly meant to reassure his dad.

But the fact is that at that instant, Stanton didn’t know if he would be OK, and didn’t know if, with that one pitch, his career had been altered forever, in the way that one moment altered everything for other young players. The next time that Stanton spoke with reporters, after spending days with doctors, he acknowledged to them that if the pitch had struck him differently, millimeters in another direction, the injuries he sustained could’ve been career-threatening.

Millimeters in another direction, and the Marlins wouldn’t be willing to offer him a contract for something in the range of $325 million over 12 years, which is one of the options that has been discussed.

Only Stanton knows if his season-ending injury is a factor in how he feels about the Marlins’ varied and staggering proposals, which are designed