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Going Deep: There’s no Business, Like Sano Business

Will 2019 finally be the year Miguel Sano lives up to the superstar potential?

In 2009, the Minnesota Twins agreed to a contract with the 16-year-old, 190 pound, Dominican shortstop Miguel Sano. The deal included a $3.15 million signing bonus, the largest international signing bonus in Twins history. He cracked Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list entering the 2010 season as a 17-year-old. By 2013, he was ranked Baseball America’s ninth-best overall prospect. Today, at the age of 26 and weight of 272 pounds, Sano is considered by many a lost opportunity. An injury-riddled and drama-filled career has resulted in significant on and off-the-field obstacles. Will Sano ever lock in all that potential?

 

Let’s Take a Look Back

 

On the field, Sano was a highly touted and exciting international prospect. He busted onto the minor league scene with major power and flashes of all-around offensive dominance. Hype continued to build as he landed as the Twins’ number two overall prospect behind only Byron Buxton, who was considered by many to be the best prospect in all of baseball. His minor league numbers speak for themselves.

 

Year Level Games HR RBI BA OBP wOBA wRC+
2011 R 66 20 59 .292 .352 .419 153
2012 A 129 28 100 .258 .373 .396 146
2013 A+ 56 16 51 .330 .424 .477 203
2013 AA 67 19 35 .236 .344 .397 145
2014*
2015 AA 66 15 48 .274 .374 .414 156

*2014 missed due to Tommy John surgery

 

What’s Going Wrong?

 

The ability to play a full season is a pre-requisite to being a superstar. At 116 games, 2016 has been Sano’s healthiest season as a professional ball player. Most recently, Sano missed two months this season due to a procedure on his lower Achilles area. He has dealt with a host of injuries throughout his career, including Tommy John surgery, shin surgery resulting in a titanium rod in his left leg, and multiple other heel, knee, hamstring, and lower-body ailments.

Injuries aside, Sano has other issues. More specifically, the strikeouts. How bad? Really bad. In the following tables, I have added Sano to the qualified hitter player pool (all of his seasons have been cut short due to injury). Let’s look at the league leaders in strikeout percentage.

 

2017

G HR R RBI BA OBP SLG wRC+ K%
Chris Davis 128 26 65 61 .215 .309 .423 92 37.2%
Joey Gallo 145 41 85 80 .209 .333 .537 121 36.8%
Miguel Sano 114 28 75 77 .264 .352 .507 124 35.8%
Trevor Story 145 24 68 82 .239 .308 .457 81 34.4%
Aaron Judge 155 52 128 114 .284 .422 .627 172 30.7%

 

2018

G HR R RBI AVG OBP SLG wRC+ K%
Miguel Sano 71 13 32 41 .199 .281 .398 82 38.5%
Chris Davis 128 16 40 49 .168 .243 .296 46 36.8%
Joey Gallo 148 40 82 92 .206 .312 .498 110 35.9%
Yoan Moncada 149 17 73 61 .235 .315 .400 97 33.4%
Teoscar Hernandez 134 22 67 57 .239 .302 .468 107 31.2%

 

2019

G HR R RBI BA OBP SLG wRC+ K%
Miguel Sano 40 13 28 24 .236 .321 .574 128 38.1%
Wil Myers 88 12 42 27 .217 .314 .402 92 35.7%
Brandon Lowe 76 16 40 49 .276 .339 .523 128 33.9%
Michael Chavis 69 15 38 48 .263 .332 .467 106 33.2%
Rougnad Odor 74 13 40 47 .193 .258 .396 62 32.4%

 

Despite the strikeout concerns, Sano still posted an above-league-average wRC+ in both 2017 and 2019. Sano has solid plate discipline—the issue lies in the swing and miss. Thus far in 2019, Sano has the worst Z-contact (contact on swings at strikes) and sixth-worst O-contact rate (contact on swings at balls) in the MLB. When you connect on only 64% of the pitches you swing at, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach that potential. This issue has persisted throughout Sano’s entire career: minors and majors. Splits aren’t the issue. For his career, Sano hits .254 against lefties and .240 versus right-handers. It’s the breaking stuff that causes concern: Sano is whiffing at more than 50% of the breaking pitches. As a one-dimensional fastball hitter, the job is simple for opposing pitchers—throw the junk.

 

Pitch BA xBA SLG K% Whiff%
2017 Fastball .323 .297 .615 28.1% 30.5%
2017 Breaking .229 .199 .424 41.6% 45.1%
2017 Offspeed .164 .158 .344 50.0% 52.2%
2018 Fastball .222 .203 .429 30.6% 26.6%
2018 Breaking .167 .143 .333 55.1% 51.2%
2018 Offspeed .222 .197 .481 23.5% 38.1%
2019 Fastball .286 .250 .714 28.6% 25.6%
2019 Breaking .146 .105 .333 53.8% 50.4%
2019 Offspeed .300 .257 .700 35.0% 41.5%

 

Sano has made significant gains against offspeed pitching this year cutting his strikeout rate to 35% from 50% in 2017. Slugging percentage on offspeed has doubled to .700 in 2019 from .344 two years ago. But breaking pitches continue to fool Sano, whiffing on more than 45% each year of his young career. In 2019, Sano has actually seen less breaking pitches (33.2%) which is perhaps contributing to some early success. I would expect going forward for this pitch mix to normalize and negatively impact Sano’s performance. That being said, Sano is hitting in a stacked Twins lineup and pitchers may have no choice but to keep floating in fastballs in an attempt to avoid other threats like Nelson Cruz and Max Kepler.

 

 

What’s Going Right?

 

When Sano is able to connect, baseballs get hurt. Like really hurt. Like Mike Tyson right hook kind of hurt. It’s simple: At 51.8%, he trails only reigning MVP Christian Yelich (54%) and Hunter Renfroe (52.1%) in hard hit rate thus far in 2019. This mark is up from 44.8% in 2017 (third best in the MLB) and 42.5% in 2018. While always among the best in hard hit percentage, there is an even more intriguing underlying batted ball mark for Sano this year. Below are 2019’s leaders in minimal soft hit percentage:

 

ISO Soft% Medium% Hard% K% Avg Exit Velo (mph)
J.D. Martinez .237 8.8% 45.2% 46.0% 19.0% 91.7
Miguel Sano .338 9.4% 38.8% 51.8% 38.1% 92.9
Xander Bogaerts .240 10.1% 50.6% 39.3% 18.0% 91.2
Joey Votto .144 10.1% 50.0% 39.9% 20.9% 87.6
Evan Longoria .201 10.5% 45.0% 44.5% 20.3% 90.4

 

Sano is second to only J.D. Martinez in lowest soft contact rate and leads this group in average exit velocity. He also has an isolated power metric of .338 which is similar to Mike Trout and Josh Bell near the top of the MLB. To add to these sensational power metrics, Sano is top ten in the league for barreled ball rate per batted ball (17.6%)—a leaderboard dominated by consistent all-stars Joey Gallo, Gary Sanchez, Aaron Judge and Mike Trout. Sano also gets on base consistently, walking at over a ten percent clip. Any kind of OBP formats make Sano much more productive. Almost all of the pieces of the puzzle are in place.

At a full season pace, Sano has always posted above average numbers. Below I assumed 600 plate appearance seasons from 2017-2019 and here is what the counting stats look like:

 

PA HR R RBI
2017 600 35 93 96
2018 600 26 64 82
2019 600 46 100 86

 

What’s Next?

 

Significant work will be needed for Sano to reach his prospect potential. It all starts with health and cutting the K rate. The batted-ball data is MVP level. If Sano can simply hit the ball more, he has potential to put up monster numbers. Just hit the ball when you swing. Now parlay that with the fact he is hitting in arguably the best lineup in baseball. The Twins recently set the record for most home runs in the first half of a season. They are leading the league in R, HR, RBI, AVG, SLG and OPS. But cutting the strikeout rate is easier said than done. It is always still possible to remain productive as a high strikeout guy (e.g. Joey Gallo and Aaron Judge). There are positive early signs in 2019 that Sano has made adjustments to better handle offspeed pitches as he is hitting .300 against such pitches this year. Going forward, watch the K rate and ability to hit offspeed pitches. If he has made permanent adjustments, we could be looking at a 40 HR, 100 RBI guy. In a future world of increased health and slight strikeout rate cut, Sano could live up to the top prospect pedigree.

(Photo by Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire)

Alexander Roche

Alex studied at James Madison University and works in finance. You can find him writing about baseball on PitcherList.com and sitting in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. Twitter @alexroche_

4 responses to “Going Deep: There’s no Business, Like Sano Business”

  1. Johnny Burgers says:

    Please tell me that title was an Out Cold reference.

  2. Micah says:

    Sano or Smoak ROS? OBP & SLG roto

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