By now, you probably already know that Major League Baseball is enjoying one of its finest rookie classes ever in 2015. In particular, the limelight has had little trouble finding the likes of Carlos Correa, Joc Pederson, Kris Bryant, Noah Syndergaard, Randal Grichuk and Kyle Schwarber.
But enough about them. It’s high time the limelight was cast on someone else. His name is Miguel Sano, and he’s quietly all sorts of awesome.
This isn’t news to fans of the Minnesota Twins. They spent years watching Sano climb to the top of the prospect ranks and have obviously gotten a good look at the 22-year-old third-baseman-turned-DH in the 38 games he’s played in the majors since his call-up in early July. But it might be news to everyone else, as Sano had himself something of a coming-out party on Monday night.
Albeit in an 8-7 losing effort, Sano picked up three hits against the New York Yankees in his first career game at Yankee Stadium. One of those was a rocket of a two-run homer into the left-field bleachers that temporarily knotted the score at 3-3 in the third inning.
All told, a pretty good day. And now that it’s in the books, there’s no ignoring that Sano’s numbers are considerably better than just “pretty good.”
Across his first 157 major league plate appearances, Sano is slashing .292/.401/.554 with eight home runs. Among rookies with at least 150 plate appearances, he trails only Grichuk in slugging. He leads all said rookies, however, in on-base percentage and OPS (.955).
That’s an impressive performance even without context, but it stands out even more with context. Using the park- and league-adjusted hitting metric wRC+, Paul Swydan of FanGraphs dove into history and found that Sano is having the kind of rookie season that fewer than 30 other rookies have ever had.
Mind you, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that Sano is the best rookie 2015 has to offer. To that end, there are a number of more well-rounded guys you could pick.
But the best hitter? Yeah, that much can be argued. And the closer you look at Sano, the less surprising that becomes.
The No. 1 reason Sano’s early-career hot hitting isn’t surprising? That would be the fact that hitting has always been his thing. He racked up a .937 OPS in parts of five minor league seasons, at one point pushing his stock as high as the No. 6 spot in Baseball America‘s pre-2014 top 100.
The one tool that had the biggest hand in making this possible is Sano’s power. It produced a .564 slugging percentage and 105 home runs in the minors, and Christopher Crawford and Bret Sayre of Baseball Prospectus warned when Sano was being called up that his power was very much for real:
Sano is massive, listed at 6’4”, 260 pounds, but likely a few pounds heavier; and his ability to transfer that weight along with his incredibly strong wrists give him as much power as any right-handed hitting prospect in baseball. He’s long-limbed and lets the ball travel deep, so he can take the ball out to any part of the field. If you ever get a chance to see the 22-year-old take batting practice, do it. It’s a fun show.
In slugging .554 with eight jacks in 38 games—that’s about a 35-homer pace over a full season—it would certainly seem that Sano is living up to his billing as an elite power threat. But in reality, his results might actually undersell the degree to which he’s been crushing the ball.
Heading into Monday’s game, FanGraphs put Sano’s hard contact percentage (Hard%) at 46.1. That’s a huge leap over the league average of 28.6. So much so, in fact, that it put Sano in the special-est of company.
With a minimum of 150 plate appearances, here were MLB‘s Hard% leaders heading into Monday’s action:
- Giancarlo Stanton: 49.7
- Miguel Sano: 46.1
You know that bit from Crawford and Sayre about Sano having as much power as any right-handed prospect in baseball? Given that only Stanton has made hard contact on a more frequent basis, maybe the word “prospect” should have been replaced with the word “player” there.
There is a more unfortunate trait Sano has in common with Stanton, though. He strikes out a lot. Like, a lot as in a lot. Of his 157 plate appearances, 53 have been strikeouts. That’s a 33.8 strikeout percentage, which is enough to make even Mark Reynolds say, “Whoa, dude! Chill!”
On the bright side, just because a hitter strikes out a ton doesn’t mean he can’t be an advanced hitter. And though Sano will likely never be mistaken for Joey Votto, he’s advanced in just the kind of way you want a power-first hitter to be advanced.
“I think everybody talks about his power and how strong he is, but I think I’m mostly impressed with his eye at the plate,” said Twins veteran Joe Mauer to Derek Wetmore of 1500 ESPN. “Laying off of tough pitches. He’s got a pretty good idea of what he wants to do and needs to do.”
Naturally, this points us to one of the primary sources of Sano’s .401 on-base percentage. He’s walking in 15.9 percent of his plate appearances. If he had enough plate appearances to qualify, that’s a rate that would rank fifth in MLB.
At the heart of Sano’s walk rate is very real discipline. Entering Monday, his 42.3 swing percentage was well below the MLB average of 47.4. Likewise, his 25.1 chase percentage (O-Swing%) was well below the MLB average of 31.2. For further perspective, among the players who were chasing pitches outside the zone more regularly are Mark Teixeira, Andrew McCutchen, Manny Machado and Jason Kipnis.
To be sure, there are plenty of players who are expanding the zone less often than Sano, too. But if you want a list of players who strike a balance between plate discipline and hard contact like Sano…well, it’s a short list. Among all qualified hitters, the only other player with a hard-hit rate over 40 percent and a chase rate under 26 percent on Monday was a fellow named Paul Goldschmidt, who is arguably the game’s best hitter.
Given that Sano’s major league career is still very young, you’re excused and indeed encouraged to take all this with one, two or a hundred grains of salt. He has a ways to go yet before he proves that he can last as one of the game’s most dangerous hitters.
Early though it may be, however, there’s no ignoring that Sano has at least set himself on that path. If you weren’t already aware of that, consider yourself enlightened.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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