Gary Sanchez Finally Finds a Home as He Heads to San Francisco

We can officially stop worrying about Gary Sanchez: The two-time All-Star catcher has signed a minor league contact with the Giants. Ken Rosenthal broke the news on Friday, reporting that Sanchez will be heading to the team’s spring training facility in Scottsdale before being assigned to an affiliate (presumably Triple-A Sacramento). The deal is for $4 million, prorated for the amount of time Sanchez spends with the big club, and it includes an opt-out if he’s not called up by May 1.

Among the free agents who accrued at least 1.0 WAR last year, Sanchez is the last to find a home. He received interest from just a few teams during the winter and was unable to improve his stock while playing for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, where he made just six plate appearances, going 0-for-5 with a walk and two strikeouts. It looked like he’d be left in limbo, waiting to sign with whichever team found itself in need of a catcher due to injury. Instead, Sanchez is heading to a San Francisco team that could certainly use some help behind the dish — one that ranked 27th at catcher in our Positional Power Rankings — but already has a very clear Plan A in mind: Joey Bart.

That hope just took a small hit, as the team placed Bart on the IL with a mild back strain on Sunday. He is not expected to miss much time, and the team recalled pitcher Sean Hjelle to take his spot, leaving Roberto Pérez and Blake Sabol as the only catchers on the active roster. Pérez, 34 and known for his glove, signed with the club on a minor league contact in after spending 2022 in Pittsburgh. Sabol, whom Cincinnati picked up from Pittsburgh in the Rule 5 draft before trading him to San Francisco, started in left field on Opening Day; his defense is worrisome enough that catcher seems unlikely to be his primary position.

Despite Bart’s presence, the Giants came into spring training with an open competition for the catcher spot. “There’s one school of thought where you give the guy the job and run with it,” Farhan Zaidi told reporters. “This is maybe the other school where we have other good options and we want somebody to take the reins and be the guy. We’re certainly hoping Joey will accomplish that and he’ll certainly get the opportunities.” The former No. 2 pick and one-time heir apparent to Buster Posey apparently just let the reins dangle (or whatever it is that reins do when no one takes them); Pérez served as the starting catcher on Opening Day.

With Sanchez in the mix, the team’s floor just got a bit higher at catcher. His game features light tower power and enough swing-and-miss to air condition a small island nation. He’s always run hot and cold as a hitter, but even if you throw out his 69 wRC+ in the short 2020 season, the hots are a lot more lukewarm than they used to be:

According to Baseball Savant, Sanchez was worth -8.1 runs against sliders in 2022, a weakness that pitchers exploited mercilessly, throwing them 30.6% of the time; only Javier Báez and Nick Castellanos saw sliders more often. Midway through the 2022 season, Sanchez’s groundball rate skyrocketed, which is not ideal for a catcher who runs like a catcher. Fittingly, he faced a defensive shift 70.5% of the time last year (though his wOBA was 44 points better against the shift than it was against a traditional defense).

All the same, Sanchez just posted a 49.3% hard-hit rate and a 90.5 mph average exit velocity, so it’s not as if he’s lost his power, and he’s still handling fastballs with ease. It’s entirely possible that a few more of those hard-hit balls will find the seats this year, or that his walk or strikeout rates will be a bit closer to his career norms. Furthermore, Sanchez’s 89 wRC+ in 2022 was exactly league-average among catchers. Any bounce back at all from the worst batting line of his career (save for 2020) makes him an above-average hitter by the standards of the position; Steamer and ZiPS project him for a wRC+ of 95 and 112, respectively.

Sanchez makes an interesting case study for Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense. Coming up as a slugger, his defense was much maligned; depending on where you get your catching stats, that reputation was likely a bit unfair. But once his hitting fell off, the reputation didn’t seem to improve quite as much as it should have. Over the last three seasons, Sanchez has caught 1,915 innings, eighth-most in baseball, and he’s been worth -1.4 framing runs. On defense, we have him worth 16 defensive runs over that period, tied with Will Smith. DRS, however, docks him 10 runs due to his rCERA — that’s Catcher ERA Runs — and he’s dead last in that stat over that period. When looking at Sanchez’s slow free-agent market in February, Jay Jaffe noted that 2022 was the first season in which Baseball Prospectus rated him as a net positive in framing, blocking and throwing.

In short, Sanchez is a relatively durable option who should be an average catcher, whether crouching behind the plate or standing next to it. He’s got some upside on offense and some downside on defense. Nobody’s expecting him to be the phenom who put up a 143 wRC+ over his first two seasons with the Yankees, but as a right-handed power hitter whose HR/FB just hit a career low at 13.3%, he might stand to benefit a bit by moving from Target Field to Oracle Park. He’s 30 years old, and he could certainly help a ballclub.

In all, this is a low-risk move for the Giants. The bigger question, which Grant Brisbee explored in depth at The Athletic, is why they find themselves in this position to begin with. Bart is just 25 years old, with 133 big league games under his belt. It’s an awkward spot developmentally, and his success is by no means a sure thing. Pérez is largely a career backup who has appeared in just 97 games over the last three years. Sabol is not really playable as a regular catcher, but his Rule 5 status means that he’ll need to stay on the roster. During the offseason, the team took big swings at Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa, but San Francisco seemed perfectly content to roll into the 2023 season with no real plan at the catcher position other than to hope someone shone during spring training.

It’s entirely possible that the Giants will end up starting Sanchez. It’s also possible that they prefer his bat to Pérez’s glove in a backup role, an offense-for-defense tradeoff they’ve made elsewhere on the diamond. In the meantime, every indication is that Bart’s injury is minor, but Sanchez makes for a pretty nifty insurance plan.