Domingo Santana Heads to Seattle
No doubt partially out of a sense of jealousy at watching other teams make trades Friday without making one of his own, Jerry Dipoto and the Seattle Mariners added a veteran, picking up outfielder Domingo Santana from the Milwaukee Brewers for outfielder Ben Gamel and pitcher Noah Zavolas.
After acquiring Christian Yelich and signing Lorenzo Cain last offseason, the Brewers faced a bit of a roster crunch when it came to the outfield. On pure merit, it made the most sense for Ryan Braun to see his role shrink coming into the season, but seriously reducing their longtime franchise player’s playing time was something I don’t believe the front office was ever seriously considering. Braun would get some at-bats at first to spell Eric Thames, and between that and various days off and possible injury stints for the quartet, Santana would get playing time and everybody would be happy. And if that didn’t work out, Santana was coming off a .278/.371/.505 age-24 season that could help snag the Brewers a starting pitcher.
Everything worked out quite well for the Brewers, but not so much for Santana. The team was able to juggle the five players in question quite well in the early going, enough to get Santana 24 starts in April, though that was aided by Yelich’s sore oblique that sent him to the ten-day DL. It would be hard to claim that Santana did much with his April playing time, only hitting .237/.321/.269 with no homers. Thames’s thumb injury required the Brewers to have a full-timer at first, and with Jesus Aguilar made the absolute most of the opportunity and the outfield healthy, Santana’s playing time dropped quickly. The return of Thames created another roster crunch and Santana, with an option year available, spent July and August starting for Colorado Springs. He was called up in September, but purely as a reserve and only got a single start for the month.
The Brewers would have had a lot more difficulty trading Santana for a pitcher at this point, so rather than pay him to be a role player, they sent him over to the Mariners for a less expensive role player who can cover center field. Santana’s still relatively young and with three years to go until free agency, he’s more interesting than a pillow contract for a one-year reclamation projection. Even hanging onto Mitch Haniger, Santana likely starts in a corner for Seattle as there’s simply far more promise in his future than that of Jay Bruce.
As Eric Longenhagen noted to me, Zavolas is a former college starter with a low-90s fastball who changes speed well but is missing a solid breaking pitch. Harvard alumni will likely appreciate Zavolas for having thrown a no-hitter against Yale back in April, but he smells a lot like an organizational player to me. He got good results in his debut in the minors, but a 22-year-old ought to be crushing the Northwest League.
From a pure “this is what they project” standpoint, Santana and Gamel come out fairly evenly. I still believe that Santana has some upside remaining, but it will have to involve some kind of improvement in his plate discipline. Santana swung at more bad pitches in 2018 than in 2017, and what’s especially troubling is that unlike some bad-ball swingers, he’s actually quite poor at making contact with the out-of-zone pitches, 14 percentage points worse than the league average in 2018. It feels like there’s a really good player hidden away somewhere in Santana should he adopt a better approach at the plate, but finding that can’t be assured and none of his three previous organizations were able to make him into a better hitter.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .231 | .329 | .430 | 437 | 58 | 101 | 19 | 1 | 22 | 57 | 60 | 187 | 6 | 109 | -2 | 1.5 |
| 2020 | .232 | .331 | .436 | 427 | 58 | 99 | 19 | 1 | 22 | 57 | 60 | 184 | 5 | 111 | -3 | 1.6 |
| 2021 | .223 | .327 | .430 | 421 | 57 | 94 | 19 | 1 | 22 | 55 | 61 | 187 | 5 | 108 | -3 | 1.4 |
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .267 | .331 | .413 | 479 | 65 | 128 | 27 | 8 | 9 | 53 | 44 | 108 | 10 | 96 | 2 | 1.3 |
| 2020 | .261 | .327 | .411 | 394 | 53 | 103 | 23 | 6 | 8 | 43 | 37 | 91 | 8 | 95 | 2 | 0.9 |
| 2021 | .263 | .329 | .418 | 373 | 51 | 98 | 22 | 6 | 8 | 41 | 35 | 83 | 7 | 97 | 1 | 0.9 |
| 2022 | .263 | .328 | .419 | 365 | 49 | 96 | 21 | 6 | 8 | 41 | 34 | 80 | 7 | 97 | 1 | 0.9 |
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
This is a great deal for Seattle. Gamel has no upside, and Santana hits the ball really hard. He was a 3-win player a few years ago and there is really no reason to think he can’t back there. The projection systems are down on him because they think .360 BABIPs are unsustainable, but he runs very well and crushes the ball so hard that it’s actually totally reasonable that he keeps that up. He’s a great buy-low guy.
For the Brewers…ugh. I actually still think Santana might be better than Braun next year, and while Gamel is worth something I’m not convinced he offers much more than Santana. He’s not a great fit in CF and Santana can play the corners, so…he gets to be the fourth CF behind Cain, Yelich, and Broxton? I’m not sure he offers much more than Tyrone Taylor does in AAA. They save some money, though? I’m not sure it makes much sense.
Surprised to really like a move for the Mariners. Exactly the type of move they should be making, as Gamel is a good 4th OF and okay strong side of platoon type, but there’s no projection there. Trading Santana a year late instead of last winter is a missed opportunity, although he provided a number of pinch hits in the playoffs, and as Dan noted, they couldn’t have been sure Braun stayed healthy, and would have been averse to moving him into a true part time role anyway.
You can’t really assume Santana is going to produce like folks thought he could coming up, but Seattle is wise to bet on the upside since Gamel has little chance to appreciate and isn’t a real asset in terms of trade value.
Ya I’m not seeing the logic here for the Brewers. Santana effectively backs up all 3 OF positions and 1B with Yelich able to play CF and Braun 1B. Thames isn’t worth making room for. Santana is a better player with much more upside than Gamel.
Maybe the theory is Santana struggled while receiving inconsistent ABs this year, and since that’s what he’d get next year (at best), send him out before he’s proven totally worthless and replace him with a guy who can be effective off the bench
Santana’s out of options and can’t play center to justify a roster spot; Gamel has experience and options, so he can be stashed in AAA.
Makes sense to me, though Seattle’s getting more potential reward.
Broxton’s the better defender, and with Santana out of options, they wouldn’t have had the flexibility they now have with Gamel.
Santana definitely has more upside, but that upside was basically traded for an extra year of control of an experienced major-leaguer that has options. I like this deal better for Seattle, but I think it does make sense for Milwaukee as well.
Sorry for the redundancy. My original comment didn’t appear immediately, so I thought I had lost it. Turns out the only thing lost was my mind.
After sleeping a little bit, I dislike this deal for the Brewers even more: The option and extra year of team control isn’t worth it for a guy who just isn’t a very good player. Santana is likely a better player, definitely than the guy they traded him for, and potentially the guy starting over him (Braun, who has injury problems anyway). 4th outfielders are just less valuable than likely starters in the corner outfield, even with the extra year and positional versatility. If they keep Broxton he’s not going to be backing up CF anyway, and if they don’t keep Broxton the option isn’t likely an issue (he’ll probably not be getting sent down/pulled back). This is not a move that a team that wants to make the playoffs should be making.
It’s not likely to totally blow up on the Brewers unless Gamel underperforms or Santana turns back into the 3-win player he was before, but I don’t like this deal.
Santana hits the ball really hard? Baseball Savant shows that his hard-hit percentage, exit velocity, and barrel percentage were each among the bottom 1 percent in the majors last year.
This isn’t accurate. Both Santana’s 2018 EV (89) and career EV (89.7) are above MLB AVG (87). Same with barrel% – 2018: 10.2, career: 10.6, MLB AVG: 6.1
??? Santana was in the 63rd percentile in EV(min 120 battd balls). Plus in 2016 his EV was 92.7(probs top 25).
Haven’t you guys heard? Everyone is entitled to their own insane personal version of reality. These are not the droids you’re looking for.
And just to finish off the stats you incorrectly cite, his HH% of 38.7 ranks him at 104 of 369 batters (with 120 minimum batted ball events) which is nowhere near the bottom 1%. (Hint: it’s not even the bottom 50%)
I’m just going to assume you need to learn how to use Baseball Savant correctly.
I was going to say you might have looked by mistake at Dennis Santana, but he had an RBI double in one of his two trips to the plate in 2018.
Definitely some kind of lookup error. Santana was a hard-hit golden boy in 2017.
When the Mariners acquired Gamel, I think they thought he might be an everyday player. Now after having had him in the organization for a couple of years, they’ve concluded he’s a platoon outfielder – which is close to a fungible commodity in the off-season market.
So in the current Mariners context, why not swap him for a player who has the potential to be more than a platoon player? They have a couple of years to make that assessment.
I can’t help but think that for the Brewers, the attraction is getting optionable outfield depth for 2019. They couldn’t really fit Santana onto the roster comfortably, and they couldn’t option him. So they swap an inconvenient 2019 roster situation for a more flexible 2019 roster. They can keep Gamel on the 40-man roster, without disrupting plans for the 25-man roster. And if they ever need some added depth, they can bring up Gamel whenever they need him and he will give them solid league average production.
So to me. this look like a 2019 decisions by the Brewers, and a 2020 and beyond move by the Mariners. Which is exactly the type of deal both teams should be doing.
DiPoto should spend more time in the hospital because he just made his best deal in quite a while. Earlier comments have already alluded to the obvious fact that Gamel, while serviceable, is not a possible star. Santana is certainly not guaranteed to be anything special, but at least he has a chance to be. This is just the type of player the Mariners can get with what they have to offer and he might really help.
Kinda makes you wonder who Santana pissed off in the Brewers front office. I guess some people like Gamels. He is definitely a baseball player.
As a lifelong Brewers fan and a guy who studies batted ball profiles of Brewers in particular, It was clear to me Santana wasn’t going to repeat his 2017.
It’s true, he can hit the ball hard, even to the opposite field, but he’s a lot like a poor mans Marcel Ozuna.
He needs to hit the ball in the air more, and pull it more when he does to ever take real advantage of his raw power. Otherwise he has to rely on spikes in his HR/FB ratio, which just isn’t sustainable. If not pulling the ball more, he’d require a better approach to generate more power.
It’s true you won’t expect his BABIP to regress because he’s one of the better line drive hitters posting elite rates each of the last three years.
He’s more ground ball heavy than Puig who was another player that just needed to get the ball into the air. Kind of an unfair comp though because Santana was a much better line drive hitter, but both have great raw power to all fields.
I don’t know about that, Beyond the Box Score makes a really good argument that he was simply pressing too much last year due to the situation he found himself in. The argument is essentially the following:
– His BB% dropped to 8.5%, down 3.5% from 2017 and worse than 2016 as well
– His Opp field placement dropped to 19.7%, down 8.3% from 2017 and worse than 2016 as well
– His GB% jumped to 48.9%, up 4% from 2017 and worse than 2016 as well
– His hard hit rate remained static (~40%)
So you have rates in 2018 that appear anomalous vs his career norms, and they all happen the kinds of artifacts you might expect if someone got up to the plate being over-aggressive, and being over-aggressive would be a pretty fair expectation for a young kid who is suddenly wondering what the hell more he had to do to earn a job at the MLB level.
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2018/12/10/18132924/mlb-trade-rumors-domingo-santana-buy-low-milwaukee-brewers
I feel like Dipoto saw all all the transactions today and got jealous.
It’s been a hell of a day and I loled. Especially interesting since I have good friends who are both Reds and Dodgers fans.
Both seemed to be okay with the deal, but my friend who’s a Reds fan is just so thankful that they got rid of Homer Bailey even though they hate Puig
“No doubt partially out of a sense of jealousy at watching other teams make trades Friday without making one of his own, Jerry Dipoto and the Seattle Mariners added a veteran”
Pure gold. Thank you for this.
Dipoto’s got to sign Ervin now, right?
I hope this deal works out better for the Crew than it appears on paper.
As a brewer fan, the things I will miss:
Easy easy power, especially going the other way
The nickname “Showmingo”
His name means ‘Sunday’ and he has a history of raking on that day of the week
Just one of the nicest looking swings, especially considering how long levered the guy is.
He always seems to swing through too many pitches, whether in or out of the zone, and just not a bringer of confidence in the outfield. Ultimately I hope the change of scenery works for him I never heard any negative press out of him after being relegated to the bench after the 2017 breakout. He’s an xb machine when he’s on.
I start to worry now about the erosion of mke’s core of Latin players, with Villar and now Santana out, Arcia and Aguilar still much to prove, and Hernan Perez just kind of a fringy major leaguer. These vets have made for an incredible clubhouse environment that has helped drive winning — LoCain and Yelich were able to just come in and do work last season because the established culture was already so strong. They really were only asked to lead by example while all the styles in the clubhouse could mesh easily in such a loose environment. Chacin signed because he saw it while in the opposing dugout. I know this sounds awfully fanboyish and is way not fangraphsish but it’s fun to throw around anyway. Sometimes the unmeasurable human stuff is just obvious when you watch a team closely.
Is Ben Gamel the brother of Mat Gamel?
As a fellow Brewers fan, I agree completely regarding Santana. He’s talented and seems to be a good guy. I hope he bounces back and does well with his opportunity.
Regarding the team’s culture, I think you’re right that some of the Latin American players are clubhouse leaders in terms of team personality–it’s especially apparent with Arcia and Perez, who are always clowning around with guys. But I don’t see any reason for concern. The whole team was loose last year when they were winning, and most of those guys will be back. Here’s hoping they keep winning. If they can do that, I think they’ll continue to stay loose.
Edit: Oh, and yes… Ben Gamel is Mat’s brother.
Oh cool, never thought about the “Gamel”.
Cat Gamel is best Gamel tho.
Must be a lot of Mariner fans here. Santana can’t play CF…he can barely play RF although he was a bit better there last year than the year prior. Having said that a team like Seattle can take a risk that he hits his 40 HR ceiling. The Brewers need a different type of player while in this contending window. Gamel has more flexibility both on field and with the available contract option.
Do the projection systems regress BABIP towards the league average? I don’t see how Santana could be projected for a .336 BABIP going forward unless this is the case considering he has consistently run BABIP’s in the higher .300’s.
If so this seems like a flaw in the projection system to me. BABIP carries considerable volatility year to year and should be regresssed for projection purposes but its baseline value for each player varies by their individualized batted ball profile. Some players will run higher than league average BABIP consistently while others will run lower than league average BABIP consistently according to their skill-based batted ball proclivities.
They should either be regressed towards the individual player’s career average or regressed toward a predicted outcome based on their batted ball proclivities (to the extent it is possible). I see no reason to regress it towards the league average at all unless you have no data.
If you did this with Santana he would project significantly higher than 1.6 WAR….and I think that projection would be a lot more accurate. There is little reason to think based on the available data that .336 should be Santana’s expected BABIP going forward and this significantly affects his projection as a hitter.
My guess is that something in his line drive heavy profile gets regressed out. He’s likely in the top 5 for line drive rate over the past three seasons. That’s his calling card – line drive and below launch angles. Needs to air it out to break out.