Gary Sanchez Isn’t a Superstar Yet and That’s Fine
Brilliance in small samples can be intoxicating. Case in point: in a poll conducted by ESPN this preseason, 41% of respondents predicted Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez would slug between 31-40 homers this year. Another 10% called for more than 40. For reference, of the 38 hitters who reached the 30-homer threshold in 2016, only one of them (Evan Gattis) did work as a catcher.
On the one hand, it’s not difficult to understand the reason for that sort of enthusiasm. Sanchez was excellent in 200-plus plate appearances for the Yankees last year, hitting 20 homers and recording just over three wins in a wonderful late-season burst. On the other hand, expecting a player to continue that kind of pace — especially a young catcher with limited exposure to major-league pitching — is probably unreasonable.
I attempted to warn everyone about the pitfalls of such expectations back in March. From that post:
In the fantasy baseball world, only Buster Posey is being drafted earlier at catcher. Generally conservative projection systems forecast that Sanchez will be a star this season. ZiPS pegs Sanchez for 27 homers, a 112 wRC+, and a 3.4 WAR season. PECOTA’s 70th percentile outlook has Sanchez recording 33 homers, a .504 slugging mark, and 4.8 wins. And the Fans’ average crowdsourced projection for Sanchez is a .274/.344/.488 slash line and 5.4 WAR season. The Fans believe, in other words, that Sanchez and Bryce Harper are going to produce similar value this season. …
Even in Yankee Stadium II, Sanchez wasn’t a good bet to repeat his 40% home-run rate on fly balls (HR/FB). In fact, his current mark, just shy of 27%, is still well above average. And while Sanchez could go on to produce a monster second half, the first third of the 2017 season has been a reminder not to draw too much from a small sample.
It’s not that Sanchez has been a poor player to date; quite the contrary, in fact. He’s been an above-average hitter (121 wRC+) at a position where we rarely see such offensive production. He’s having a really good year so far. He’s just not the superstar many expected him to be in his first full season. He’s still one of the more valuable young players in the game, and we know all about his potential. But his .256/.343/.471 slash line better resembles a career minor-league line (.275/.339/.461) produced over nearly 2,500 at-bats than his briefer showing last season.
The exit velocity is still strong (92.7 mph), but his barrel-per-PA rate (5.7%) has become pedestrian.
Sanchez, like all young players, is facing an adjustment period. He’s a threat at the plate and is very much being treated as a threat. The rate of four-seam fastballs he’s seen from 2016 to this season has declined by five percentage points. Pitchers are very aware of his 70-plus-grade power. As of Thursday he was seeing the seventh-lowest frequency of four-seam fastballs in the sport:
| Name | wOBA | wRC+ | FA% (pfx) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Albert Pujols | 0.299 | 90 | 23.6% |
| 2 | Marwin Gonzalez | 0.434 | 180 | 24.4% |
| 3 | Salvador Perez | 0.315 | 94 | 24.7% |
| 4 | Michael Conforto | 0.426 | 171 | 25.9% |
| 5 | Chris Owings | 0.337 | 103 | 26.3% |
| 6 | Rougned Odor | 0.257 | 53 | 26.3% |
| 7 | Gary Sanchez | 0.346 | 117 | 26.6% |
| 8 | Mike Moustakas | 0.344 | 114 | 26.8% |
| 9 | Leury Garcia | 0.348 | 118 | 26.9% |
| 10 | Aaron Hicks | 0.424 | 171 | 27.7% |
| 11 | Brandon Drury | 0.326 | 96 | 27.7% |
| 12 | Matt Joyce | 0.295 | 87 | 27.8% |
| 13 | Joey Gallo | 0.348 | 115 | 27.9% |
| 14 | A.J. Pollock | 0.339 | 104 | 27.9% |
| 15 | Miguel Sano | 0.424 | 169 | 28.2% |
| 16 | Jay Bruce | 0.346 | 118 | 28.2% |
| 17 | Jett Bandy | 0.338 | 105 | 28.5% |
| 18 | Didi Gregorius | 0.336 | 110 | 28.7% |
| 19 | Yunel Escobar | 0.322 | 105 | 28.7% |
| 20 | Jorge Bonifacio | 0.363 | 126 | 28.8% |
Pitchers are throwing Sanchez two-seamers at a rate of two percentage points more often, but what he’s really seeing is more movement and spin. The rate at which he has seen sliders is the 29th highest in the game. And it’s not as if he hasn’t damaged sliders in the past, but his isolated-slugging mark against sliders this season is a startling line of triple zeroes.
Sanchez has a whiff-per-swing rate of 46% on breaking pitches, which is “exceptionally high” as noted by Brooks Baseball. It’s becoming more and more a spin world that Sanchez inhabits, and he will have to prove he can make an adjustment.
Small samples are particularly dangerous in the information age. Teams can identify weaknesses earlier and earlier, and attack them earlier and earlier. It’s incumbent upon young hitters to more quickly make adjustments.
So while Sanchez has failed to pick up where he left off — he actually started to cool down in September — this is perhaps also good time to buy on Sanchez. His plate discipline has remained intact. He’s actually cut his out-of-zone swings and swinging-strike rate. His pair of two-homer games over the past week-plus is a reminder of the power he possesses. His productivity has slowly been on the rise. He would do well to use the opposite field (10% rate this season) as much as he did a year ago (15%) with the smallest right field in baseball located in his home ballpark. He’s been the 50th unluckiest hitter this season, according to Baseball Savant (among those with at least 75 at-bats), so there’s probably room for positive regression, too.
The raw power is still very, very real. He is still one of the more valuable young assets in the game. He is still an important building block for the next Yankees dynasty. But expecting a full dominant season from Sanchez in his first full major-league season, after the opposition has had an offseason and spring to examine him in this information age, was also a risky bet. It was always asking a lot.
While Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, Francisco Lindor and Manny Machado have made breaking into the big leagues seem relatively easy, with the quality of pitching and scouting it has never been more difficult.
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.
No mention of him missing nearly half of the season so far? He started off super cold, and since coming off the DL has looked like the same guy he was last year. He is still homering 1 in every 15 at bats. He might not hit 40, but if this is who he is, he is still either the 1 or 2 catcher in the entire game offensively.
Yea, not sure why the injury was ignored in this piece. He was on a ~35HR pace just last week.
Yeah, he’s hit .277/.371/.505, good for a 138 wRC+, since coming off the DL.
He’s doing fine.
Rookies getting off to hot starts is great but places unfair expectations by casual fans. I know fans who follow the sabermetrics world understand extremely hot starts by rookies is unsustainable. It’s almost an instinct of ours’ to anticipate regression.
But for casual fans, hot starts translates to expect continuous play. My only proof of this was how Yankees fans, on the various Yankees forums I browse, started to call out Sanchez and Judge when they dipped in production. Like they expected Judge to continue hitting like Ruth after his amazing April, and they expected Sanchez to continue his god-tier home run production from late last season. I can’t even tell you how many comments I’ve seen that Sanchez is “dead-weight” after he posted an 0-4, or when Judge “needs to rest” because he did not his a 450+ ft home run at 115 mph + exit velo. It’s crazy.
The impact of such fans is minimal but a very unique phenomena that occurs. Just something I’d like to share that I’ve witnessed.
Fans expecting hot starts to sustain indefinitely has been going on forever. Growing up in central NJ, the biggest buzz in baseball card shows after the 1998 season was Shane Spencer’s rookie card. The dealers were arguing that since Spencer hit 10 homeruns in a month’s worth of playing time, he would be challenging the single-season homerun record in 1999. Even as a high school kid I thought “Get a grip, guys.” He finished with 59 in his career.
While I think was odd it wasn’t mentioned, every statistic Travis cited was a ratio, so it’s not like he was dinged for not having 15 HRs in June.
In my opinion he couldn’t possibly be a “superstar” after having 370 PA in the big leagues. The sample size for this year is even smaller than the one for last year. If brilliance in small samples can be intoxicating, what can be said about being merely “good” in even smaller samples? It’s too early for this article.
My opinion, having watched almost every major league game he’s played, is that while I have no idea if he’ll be a superstar, he’ll be better than he’s been so far this year. His swing is smooth, quick, and powerful. He’s been impatient this year, chasing pitches out of the zone. Last year he showed he could lay off similar pitches. He’s also been opening up too quickly, pulling off the ball and not making good contact. I think he’ll make an adjustment.
He’s regressed from 40% to 26.7% on his HR/FB rate (as most expected), but so far this season has upped his line drive rate by 7.5% and lowered his ground ball rate by 6.7%. Those are a couple changes I’m glad to see as a Yankees fan moving forward.
Who is so disappointed in Gary Sanchez running at 121 wRC+ at age 24 while playing catcher? He’s whacked 8 homers in 137 plate appearances, which translates to well over 30 for 600 PAs (which is the hook of being too optimistic earlier in the article). The only reason he’s not a Top 5 catcher at this exact moment is because Tyler Flowers and Alex Avila have been replaced by aliens, and it sure seems like he’s on track to be the best non-Posey catcher we’ve seen in the last few years (maybe non-Grandal catcher too…)
Yeah, I’m not sure why it’s glossed over that he’s actually hit at a rate of 35 homers per 600 plate appearances this season. He was hurt early and struggled when he first came back, but in his last 40 plate appearances, he’s put up a .256/.310/.590 slashline with a BABIP of only .240. I’m actually tempering my expectations as a Yanks fan, but this is a really odd article considering how well he’s played in the last few weeks.
A conservative estimate would have him hitting 18-20 more home runs this season. He hit 20 in 201 at bats in his rookie year, and so far 8 in 121 at bats. He is looking great behind the plate, and has gotten unlucky at the plate and still put up an offensive line 20% above average. If this is who he is, he is a borderline superstar. He missed 22 games due to injury so far. If we add in those 22 games that he missed, and prorate his war we would get an additional .55 war from the games he missed. That would give him 1.35 on the season. With the average of the rest of the season projecting him at 2.4 more, that would give him 3.8 total if he had played the entire season…just based on what he is doing now, and ROS projection. That may not quite be superstar, but thats based on conservative estimates.
He is likely to have missed about 7 home runs worth of at bats. That would put him at 15 on the year…if he had his same apx line .250/350/475 with 15 home runs and + defense, I doubt this article would of been written.
This article seems weird and misplaced. “Superstar” is not well-defined, and it’s not clear to me that an exciting young catcher who is a former top prospect and who made a huge splash as a rookie on the most popular team in baseball and remains probably the best hitting catcher in baseball in his sophomore year (and who just crushed two dramatic home runs off a former Cy Young award winner in a nationally-televised Red Sox-Yankees game) is not a “superstar”.
Sanchez has hit 8 HR in 137 AB this season (1 in 17.1 PAs end in HR) and he hit 20 HR in 229 AB last season (1 in 11.5 PAs end in HR). Both marks are excellent, and his 2017 rate extrapolated out over a full season of 600 ABs would yield 35 home runs, which would make those 41% of ESPN poll respondents correct. Also, his current slash line (.256/.343/.471) is remarkably similar to the Fans’ projected .274/.344/.478 line, which you mocked as producing the same fWAR as Bryce Harper’s Fans’ projection before the season and which you just brought up again to make it seem like you were correct in doubting the Fans’ projection when you actually weren’t…
You wrote plate appearances, but then quoted it with at bats which are different things.
Terrifying facts:
Manny Machado is less than 5 months older than Gary Sanchez.
Terrifying facts:
Mike Trout is almost exactly one year older than Machado and has over 200% more fWAR than Machado.
When Mike Trout was Lindor’s age, he had already posted two 10+ fWAR seasons, been an All-Star three times (and about to go for a fourth), won three silver sluggers (en route to his fourth), won the MVP, and finished second in MVP voting twice (again, en route to a third time), and won the AL-ROY.
At the same age as Kris Bryant is now, Mike Trout already accumulated 168 HR more than twice as many as Bryant, 143 SB more than 5.5 times as many as Bryant, and 47.7 fWAR, more than 2.75 times Bryant’s fWAR.
Mike Trout: The God-Emperor of Anaheim. A bloated human-sandworm hybrid, who rules major league baseball with an iron fist for 3,500 years…
With Bryce Harper as his Duncan Idaho ghola
Sanchez has 8 HRs and has played in 33 games.
thinking that he would hit 30+ in 120+ games is not all that unreasonable
The general point of this is valid and worthwhile, but it’s all a bit overdrawn and premature.
Remember that Sanchez’s stats THIS year are the small sample, compared with his 2016. The preseason projections are still a more meaningful baseline than his current line. I don’t think 33 games of a season, split up by a month on the DL, can tell us anything meaningful about how pitchers are adjusting to Sanchez.
Two specific counterpoints:
1) He’s hit quite nicely since coming off the DL, .286/.375/.514. If you get that from a solid defensive catcher, that *is* a superstar.
2) He’s batted way more on the road so far this year, 90 PAs vs. 51, which obviously skews the view of a power hitter in a great HR park. And he’s hit poorly at home so far, which is odd both in general and as compared to last year.
There’s no rush to define his star level.
Estrada and Price have accounted for 8 of his 29 career HR. Estrada threw him 2 changeup his last game which Gary hit for HR. Both middle in and waist high. Price threw him a change up middle middle which Gary hit for a HR then then a not so fast high insude FB which he also crushed.
Anyone throwing up in the zone especially inside and middle thats less than 95+ Mph just has not been paying attention. Anyone throwing changeups intentionally that are not at the knees and at outside part of plate is just a dope
What’s the current book on Pujols, now seeing the least four-seamers in the game? He has been around 33% for years, now down at 25%.
Interestingly, by PFx run values he’s actually sucked against them this year.
This article looks worse by the day.
Agreed – Sanchize must’ve read the article and said I’ll show you who’s a superstar.
I’ll admit i came back here thinking the same thing. I’ve been a Yankees fan a long time. Family had season tickets from 1980-1995 (yep. The price rose dramatically after 95) and I can honestly say I haven’t been this excited for the team since that 95 team.
I’ve held off on believing but they look like a real contender going forward. With some of their best prospects nicely spread throughout the system.
Sanchez now has 30 home runs in 337 career ABs…
To be fair, Travis made the mistake that everyone makes. He said, “it’s small sample, he’ll regress back.” The problem is, we don’t know what it is he’s going to be regressing *to*. We knew last year it wasn’t that super-crazy HR surged player, but it wasn’t clear that *this* was his true performance level either.
Also, I wouldn’t want to be the one making predictions for Fangraphs either, not with people like me picking apart everything I say. We’re a tough crowd.
Sanchez is now up to 138 wRC+, 10 HR, and 1.2 fWAR in 151 PA. Prrate that to 550 PA, and you’d have 36 HR and 4.5 fWAR, which seems really low for a C with a 138 wRC+.
Too soon, Junior.
“the Fans’ average crowdsourced projection for Sanchez is a .274/.344/.488 slash line ”
So now that he’s basically .270/.360/.540, should we update this article to discuss why the Fans were unduly conservative?
It seemed odd to me to suggest that 30+ HRs plateau was unreasonable and ignore the fact that he was injured for a month.
The article was also highly suggestive that his performance up to 6/9 was the regression to expect AND again not mention that he was hurt for a month and struggled after coming back from the injury.
He had a wRC+ which was not surpassed by any qualified batters last year and only equaled by Trout. Everyone knew that he would regress, the question was to what. It seemed silly to throw out last year’s numbers as small sample size, and use this years numbers which were an even smaller sample after a significant injury and not mention any of those counterpoints.
How many HRs will he have in his first 162 ML games? 45? He’s at 31 in 93 games.