A More Selective Miguel Sano Is Crushing It
CLEVELAND – Miguel Sano knows what he wants.
In the visiting team quarters in Progressive Field, there’s a small kitchen — like something you might find in a World War II-era submarine — that offers players various pre- and post-game sustenance. On Sunday morning, Sano, apparently unsatisfied with the options, disappeared from the clubhouse and reappeared with rectangular aluminum carry-out pan containing mangú, a Dominican breakfast dish of mashed plantains topped with a type of thinly sliced sausage. He said he had procured it from a local restaurant. The 6-foot-4, 260-pound Sano is known as a popular teammate and this catering feat was a prime example. As he appeared with breakfast, several of his teammates, also of Dominican origin, huddled around a card table in the center of the clubhouse for a Sunday morning feast.
Sano is selective at the plate, too.
Sano has always had excellent discipline, but this season his walk rate has jumped to 20.1%, which trails only Matt Carpenter’s 20.8% mark, entering play Tuesday. He’s trimmed his out-of-zone swing rate from 24% to 21% this season. He’s 23rd in pitches seen per plate appearance (4.24).
He’s become more discerning about the pitches at which he offers, and perhaps it explains this Sano fact: only 1.6% of his contact this season has been categorized as “soft.” Sano is more often looking for, and not missing, pitches of his liking. His soft contact rate was 14.1% last season.
Now, contact quality is not a perfect measure of batted-ball quality. It’s subject to bias. But the next-best mark since quality of contact began being tracked in 2002, was a 5.1% soft-contact percentage by Joe Mauer in 2002.
| Season | Name | Team | Soft% | Hard% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2017 | Miguel Sano | Twins | 1.6% | 54.0% |
| 2 | 2006 | Joe Mauer | Twins | 5.1% | 30.6% |
| 3 | 2006 | Brian Roberts | Orioles | 5.1% | 29.3% |
| 4 | 2004 | Manny Ramirez | Red Sox | 5.5% | 38.4% |
| 5 | 2009 | Joe Mauer | Twins | 5.8% | 37.6% |
| 6 | 2006 | Jason Bay | Pirates | 5.9% | 34.0% |
| 7 | 2006 | Richie Sexson | Mariners | 6.1% | 37.2% |
| 8 | 2006 | Manny Ramirez | Red Sox | 6.2% | 39.2% |
| 9 | 2012 | Miguel Cabrera | Tigers | 6.2% | 43.0% |
| 10 | 2006 | Carlos Delgado | Mets | 6.3% | 33.8% |
By hard hit percentage, Sano ranks second since the metric begun being tracked in 2002, though the methodology changed in 2010.
| Season | Name | Team | Soft% | Hard% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2007 | Ryan Howard | Phillies | 8.9% | 55.2% |
| 2 | 2017 | Miguel Sano | Twins | 1.6% | 54.0% |
| 3 | 2017 | Nick Castellanos | Tigers | 7.9% | 51.5% |
| 4 | 2017 | Paul Goldschmidt | D-backs | 10.9% | 50.9% |
| 5 | 2017 | Tim Beckham | Rays | 16.5% | 50.6% |
| 6 | 2017 | Marcell Ozuna | Marlins | 20.2% | 49.0% |
| 7 | 2017 | Wil Myers | Padres | 14.3% | 48.7% |
| 8 | 2017 | Joey Gallo | Rangers | 16.7% | 48.5% |
| 9 | 2017 | Miguel Cabrera | Tigers | 6.9% | 48.0% |
| 10 | 2017 | Corey Seager | Dodgers | 7.2% | 47.8% |
If you prefer something more free of subjective analysis, Sano is also sixth in expected wOBA — or xwOBA, MLB’s batting metric based on exit velocity and launch angle. He also leads baseball in average exit velocity (99 mph). By comparison, Aaron Judge ranks sixth (93.9 mph).
By any measure, Sano is crushing the baseball.
He’s always been capable. He ranked 15th in average exit velocity last season (92.3 mph) and second in 2015 (94.0 mph), trailing only Giancarlo Stanton (95.9 mph), according to Baseball Savant. Nelson Cruz led baseball in average exit velocity in 2016 (95.1).
With batted-ball performance nearing stabilization points, Sano is perhaps on track to make some history. While Judge is one of the few players capable of hitting a pitch with more force than Sano, no one is hitting the ball harder and more consistently than Sano.
Sano was great in 80 games as a rookie in 2015, posting a 150 wRC+ mark. He struggled some last year (107 wRC+), but he has performed at an elite level (190 wRC) to date this year thanks to a more refined approach and (perhaps as a result) higher quality of contact. It’s allowed for elite-level production despite a 34.5% strikeout rate.
“He’s learned to be aggressive toward pitches he can drive,” Twins hitting coach James Rowson said. “I always say experience helps a lot of things along. I think it’s just another year. Getting a chance to see what the league looks like. He saw a lot of it last year. He kind of came in [to the season] looking for pitches to drive and he stuck with that. It’s one of the things that stand out. He has not given in on at-bats. He’s stayed pretty disciplined. He looks for his pitch and he hits it hard… He’s not looking for walks. He’s looking to drive the baseball. He’s taking the walks that are given to him.”
Consider a heat map of all of Sano’s swings in 2016:
And consider a heat map of all of Sano’s swings in 2017:
Then consider a heat map of Sano’s swing frequency against offspeed and breaking pitches in 2016:
Versus 2017:
They are seemingly modest adjustments, but Sano is raising his sights, and becoming more selective.
“There’s a lot of pitches he may be laying off that he wasn’t laying of in the past,” Rowson said.
Sano said he he worked with Fernando Tatis this past winter on adjustments to his swing and balance, about which I wrote early last month. Sano said he also spent a considerable amount of time watching video this offseason of right-handed hitters Miguel Cabrera, Manny Machado, and Manny Ramirez to see how they approach breaking balls.
“They let the ball get closer [to home plate],” Sano said. “And they hit it the opposite way.”
Rowson said Sano has stuck to a pre-game soft toss and hitting routine where he works on different areas of the strike zone. He said he has a better understanding of what pitchers are trying to do, how they are trying to sequence against him.
“I’m just looking for a good pitch and trying to hit it hard,” Sano said.
Rowson is not worried about the strikeouts.
“His strikeouts aren’t an issue in my opinion because he is aggressive in the zone,” Rowson said. “If you try to cut something back it might take something away that he’s doing well.”
And what Sano is doing well is hitting the ball harder than anyone on record.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
His swing really just looks like a slightly noisier version of Miguel Cabrera’s.
.434 BABIP has helped. He’s still swinging and missing at ridiculous rates too. I’m intrigued but not sold this is sustainable path to success (relative to his own past).
Yes, but the hard contact surely is a (big?) reason for the high BABIP.
Can’t hurt
One thing that would have helped this post and maybe provide a better explanation for his high BABIP would be an launch angle heat map comparison from last year to this year.
It’s a good bet that Sano will remain an outlier in BAbip. So far, of all those with 800 PAs since 1920, Sano’s career .364 BAbip trails only Hornsby (.377) and Heilmann (.367). He’s not likely to keep up this year’s .434, but he ran a .396 his rookie year, when he hit .269/.385/.530. I don’t expect him to hit .300, but I think he can easily hit .270 with even more power than that rookie year.
In BA on contact (which I prefer to BAbip), Sano’s .438 career mark is easily tops in the same pool of guys with 800 PAs since 1920. The rest of the .400 club is Trout .416, Ruth .412, Hornsby .407, Kris Bryant .407, Goldschmidt .405, and Votto & Manny even .400. So again, while his current .524 seems unsustainable, it’s hard to set his upper bound yet.
But then you are ok with saying he his true talent BABIP is basically the third highest in history.
What is more likely: That he really is the third best hitter in history on getting hits when he makes contact OR that his BABIP is going to heavily regress?
He can be a great hitter with a .330-.340 BABIP. Miguel Cabrera’s career BABIP is .347, which I would say is the very upper limit on Sano’s BABIP skills.
Sano looks like a .250/.350/.550 hitter once it regresses. Still great. But much more Adam Dunn than Miguel Cabrera.
Yet you seem OK with the assumption that his true-talent K rate is the highest in history, based on his almost 1,000 PAs.
We’re in an age of extreme batter approaches, so we’ll likely keep seeing outliers in these measures, as we already have.
On the live-ball era BAbip leaderboard:
— #3 is Odubel Herrera, .362 in 1,346 PAs (tied with Sano).
— #6 is Trout, .360 in 3,715 PAs.
— #7 is Yelich, .359 in 2,280 PAs.
— #9 is Marte, .358 in 2,514 PAs.
— #10 is Votto, .356 in 5,602 PAs.
— #11 is Goldschmidt, .355 in 3,533 PAs.
In all, 12 of the top 20 are active now. I have no problem believing that Sano could be a true-talent .350-.360 BAbip. He hits the ball as hard as anyone I’ve seen, and he doesn’t hit grounders.
Clearly we need the Twins to go thru cleveland more often! Great stuff, Travis.
Why are all the hard contact leaders from 2017 except for 2007 Ryan Howard? Where’s 2004 Ryan Howard, for example?
I feel it might lead to a conclusion on why power is up even more this year.
Note: I see the “qualified hitters” condition now which I missed on an earlier reading.
It’s legit though. Just ran the search myself, of the top 15, only Howard’s 2007 is NOT from 2017. At 16, you have Carlos Pena’s 2009, followed by Howard’s 2008. Howard’s 2004 was only 42 PA’s, so it doesn’t pass the ‘qualified’ threshold, but it was 53.8%, which would have ranked 3rd.
It’s easier to be extreme over six weeks than over a year, but this still seems remarkable. Is there a way to truncate every year to “before May 15” to get similar data?
Travis touched on this but he’s not putting the ball in play that much. He’s at 20% for walks and 34.5% for K’s and I’m guessing when he swings he is ready to go.
Travis, I think you are easily the best writer at Fangraphs. Your articles are consistently interesting because they mix in vivid non-baseball anecdotes naturally rather than forcing out-of-place pop culture references, and your grammar and spelling are better than the vast majority of internet writers these days. Your analysis is usually spot-on and you rarely fail to mention a factor important to the analysis. I just wish they could clone you so we would have more Travis articles! Keep doing what you do!
“His strikeouts aren’t an issue in my opinion because he is aggressive in the zone,” Rowson said. “If you try to cut something back it might take something away that he’s doing well.”
Having been a Twins fan for years, it is so refreshing to hear this from the team’s hitting coach. For seemingly ever, the Twins’ organizational coaching philosophy has been so overly conservative. They preached contact oriented approaches to dead pull power hitters (think David Ortiz and Carlos Gomez, even JJ Hardy to an extent) and, to a lesser extent, preached changeup development to electric fastball/slider pitchers (think Francisco Liriano), although the lack of good Twins pitchers in recent years is mostly due to an overly conservative drafting strategy.
It’s nice that that philosophy has seemed to change to “encourage players to become the best type of player they can be with their given skillset”.
Sano is crushing it. Is he being more selective? By some measures, no:
— Pitches per PA virtually the same as his first 2 years.
— Swinging slightly more often (42% vs. 41%).
— Has put the first pitch in play much more often than in the past. (His 11% is near the median for qualifiers, but his past rate was 7%. And he’s murdered those first pitches — 15 ABs, 4 HRs, a triple and 3 singles.)
— Behind in the count slightly more than before (28% to 27%), but doing much better in those spots (.487 SLG vs. .256).
He is walking more. But he’s always had a positive walk rate; and a hot Sano is going to draw more walks out of sheer terror even if he’s no more selective.
Remember that Sano’s first 51 career games produced 15 HRs, 42 RBI, .296/.405/.620, and 16% walks. So we know he can rake for a long stretch. And we know he can slump for a long stretch. 33 games into this year, I’m not sure how to tell if he’s really different.
This blew me away: On the baseball savant leaderboards, for “Estimated Swing Speed” Sano is first with 69.4 MPH. Aaron Judge is 2nd with 65.5. The difference between Sano and Judge is the difference between Judge and Max Kepler. Max Kepler is 42nd.