Gregor Blanco Identifies the Moment
Right now, Gregor Blanco is on his way to his second above-average year as a key (if underrated) component in a championship outfield — “a dream come true” as he puts it. Just two years ago, though, he didn’t get a single major league plate appearance and found himself in Venezuela without a job. There was a moment, though, that sparked the change. A single decision, about a single body part, and Blanco found himself on the road to where he is now.
You can see the moment in his numbers, really. In his larger sample early years (2008 and 2010), Blanco was a good defender with patience that added value to his teams. In 2011, he had a .201 batting average across two Triple-A teams and was sliding out of baseball. He’d been hearing about his shortcomings — “this guy can do this better, in Atlanta” and “if he could run the bases better, if he could bunt better,” in Kansas city — and free agency was looming.
Then Gregor Blanco decided it was time to get right. He had surgery on his wrist — something in there had been bothering him for a couple years — and he returned home, and to the basics. A lengthy rehab allowed him to “get fast” and “work on all the tools” he always had. And then an MVP season in the Venezuelan leagues showed the Giants that he was worthy of interest. “I found myself again, the player I wanted to be,” said Blanco of that time.
Blanco hasn’t been, and won’t be, a power threat in the traditional sense. He’s hit eight home runs his entire career, and even by other measures his power is below average. But, as he puts it, he can still hit doubles, triples and get extra bases. Especially now that he’s not choking up on the bat. Check him out in 2010 on your right.
“Before I choked up a lot, because of the injury,” he said, “but not any more now that I have my strength.” Blanco also pointed out he is more aggressive now.
It’s quite a change. If all we do is just look at some key numbers before and after his surgery, we can see a sea change in the player’s approach. It’s served him well.
| Swing% | GB/FB | ISO | K% | wRC+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-2010 | 40.1% | 2.07 | 0.066 | 18.9% | 90 |
| 2012-2013 | 43.7% | 1.34 | 0.102 | 22.1% | 97 |
Right now, Blanco is showing the lowest walk rate of his career, but he feels he can do better. The balance between aggressiveness and patience is one that he still needs to develop, he agrees. Consistency at the plate is a goal of his, but he feels he can do it since his mantra is to “always learn from mistakes and try to do better.”
Even at 29, Gregor Blanco thinks his offense can improve. A huge part of that was a decision once upon a time to finally correct a nagging injury, and get to work being the guy he always thought he was. Now? “I feel much better now, I feel more myself, and I can do the things I want to do,” says the Giant outfielder.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Love Blanco!
This is really trying to fit the stats to the narrative.
Look at his player page before reading the article and try to identify any kind of obvious trend. Given the small sample sizes, it’s actually surprising there isn’t more variation. If anything, the noteworthy thing about his career statistics is their stability, not that they point to any kind of improvement.
Once I turned off the minor league numbers on his player page, I immediately wrote down: “ask about aggressiveness at plate and ground-ball rate” because the swing% and GB/FB thing lept out at me. Also, those two samples are in more than 750 PAs, which seems decent to me, even though you are correct he’s bounced around.
Along with the picture, him saying he quit choking up goes beyond narrative to me. It’s a thing that happened. And then his numbers changed.
Agreed with Eno. He’s not Jose Bautista by any measure, but if you reframe his stats in terms of percent change, it’s a pretty big difference:
Swing%: 9% greater
GB/FB: 35% lower
ISO: 52% greater
K%: 17% greater
wRC+: 8% greater
I guess we’ve seen it all now, even an article about Gregor Blanco (admit it, this had to have actually been written by Wendy the Giants fan). On one hand, it is criminal the lack of respect that the Giants get as winners of two of the last three Series, but on the other hand, they have players like Gregor @#$! Blanco who have no business being in professional baseball.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong and we need articles like this to uncover the secrets being the greatness of Giants scrubs that magically overperform as Giants. Indeed, others that got the same surgery must include Scutaro, Crawford, Hector Sanchez, Huff, Cody Ross, Pat Burrell, Renteria, and the other HOFers that won those championships. Certainly it was wrist surgery for Wilson, Romo, “Jairo” Casilla, and every starter with an magically low HR/FB%. Meanwhile, the most talented guy on the roster, the only guy to ever win two Cy Youngs in his first 2 seasons, has turned to jello.
In short, trying to explain Giants like Blanco is like explaining the universe. You can try, but in the end you’re just left with dark matter, multiverses and anti-down quarks. Forgive me, but wrist surgery just can’t explain the Blancos and Scutaros somehow always getting the exact hit needed to exactly the right spot at the exactly the right time, or making a diving catch on a ball that’s hit by their opponent just perfect enough for that key out of the game.
The only thing I like about the Giants is how their success based on contact rate disproves the “strikeouts don’t matter” modern mantra. If the game was only about home runs and contact meant nothing, the Giants wouldn’t have two rings.
You are one weird dude
quote: Scutaro, Crawford, Hector Sanchez, Huff, Cody Ross, Pat Burrell, Renteria, and the other HOFers that won those championships
Yeah, and Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, and Tim Lincecum.
It’s not that mysterious. The Giants actually have quite a few good players.
Not one but two articles, and neither by Wendy. One article per two wins accrued by the player seems like a decent rate, maybe a bit much, but I don’t think he deserves so much hatred either.
I vastly prefer your Mets fan prospective personally. What is the other article you speak of?
It seemed like Gregor changed his profile over that VWL MVP year, he was hitting for a lot of power (against much lesser pitching obviously). Thanks for filling in the story. I love the fact the Giants tag teamed him from 3 angles to get him signed: Brian Johnson, the Giant players on the Tiburons and Bam-Bam. There were other teams in on him.
Might I direct you to this post by Dave Cameron?
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/nate-schierholtz-is-worth-going-after/
Haha look at all these jealous ass haters. WORLD CHAMPS bitches.
Pretty sure YOU didn’t win a world championship.
He never said he did.
Ignoring the rest, Blanco has a career 93 wRC+ in the major leagues. If this is a player who has no business playing professional baseball, then we need to immediately do away with at least 40% of all major league hitters.
Not to mention his excellent defense and baserunning on top of it.
Blanco has been a good fill in for the injured Angel Pagan, not sure if he will ever be a regular starter. Great glove, great speed, makes contact at the plate.
I think you could make an easy case that he’s been better than Pagan this year.
He’s an above average player with a great attitude. Whether he starts or not depends on what team he’s on. He replaced Melky Cabrera last year and now Angel Pagan.
He’s going to have to be good. Pagan collapsed on his way to first base during his rehab stint yesterday. I’ve seen the words “hamstring surgery” bandied about.
That’s tough muffins for a valuable player who plays hard and keeps himself in great shape. Bummer.
There is a common thread here with these retreads. Go back and read up on Andres Torres. He was on his way out of baseball until he decided he had enough of slapping at the ball. He found a guy on the internet who said he could help him re-tool his swing to be like Albert Pujols. He started driving the ball and proceeded to put up a 4+ War season in 2010. If that doesn’t sound similar to the above Blanco story, you need to check on your pattern recognition skills.
I am in an 18 team mixed, keeper league. Each team has 23 active players and a “farm” team of at least 12 players each. With a free agent pool as bare as that, you all can understand the importance of any coverage on “unvalued” players such as Blanco (Gregor OR Henry!) BRAVO!!!
The following sentence illustrates how much others here care about your fantasy league:
Nice! And understandably deserved. Just saying Thanks for the details…
The dude rawdogs like no other.