POTD Freddy Sanchez
=== EYE RATIO ===
How many walks per strikeout for Senor Sanchez?
Age 27 - 0.75
Age 28 - 0.60
Age 29 - 0.42
Age 30 - 0.30
Age 31 - this year (TBD)
This is a player that, in a roto Keeper league, I would be V-E-R-Y careful about trading for.
A few facts, per Shandler at baseballhq.com:
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=== EYE as Leading Indicator for AVG ===
(1) Of all .300 hitters, those with eye ratios >1.0 have a 65% chance of repeating. Those with ratios
(2) Only 4% of sub-.250 hitters with eye ratios less than 0.50 will hit .300 the following year. (How about those at .30?)
(3) In a 1995-2000 study, only 37 batter-seasons (6 per year) hit .300+ with a sub-.50 eye ratio if they had at least 300 AB's. And of those few, only 30% did it consistently.
In other words, if you have a lousy eye ratio, expect a lousy AVG.
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=== EYE as Leading Indicator for PWR ===
During a 4-year study of hitters who had 30 HR's or more:
All hitters with eyes
In other words, if your eye ratio is where Franklin Gutierrez' is, yet you do manage to hit 30 homers somehow, then you are a 7-to-1 bet to decline in PX the next season.
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=== TRENDS ===
For me, projections begin, end, and wallow in EYE ratio. The ability to distinguish between balls and strikes is kind of important to a hitter.
Will Russell Branyan hit next year? How are his K's and BB's in fulltime play? Much better than his career line: he's at 4/9 right now, compared to his 3/9 historically. He's solid.
Bill James did not teach us to look at K/BB ratio. He taught us to look at where K/BB was going across a series of years.
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Sabermetrics couldn't find a better player to boo-and-hiss than Freddy Sanchez.
(He has bounced back slightly this year, to .40, but you could almost interpret that as random fluctuation. 18/45 is nothing to be proud of for a non-power hitter.
How has he hit .316/.355/.477 this year? By getting lucky. He has a .356 BABIP.)
There is nothing more important than the TREND in a hitter's or pitcher's K-to-BB ratio, and Sanchez' is catastrophic.
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=== The Good News Dept. ===
(1) Recent underperformance. Sanchez was injured in 2007, and had a .250 BABIP in the first half of 2008. His fans have MANY reasons to complain that he's been underperforming during most of the last two years -- and to hope that 2009 is a bounceback, rather than luck.
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(2) Natural hitter. Sanchez, though he doesn't hit HR's or steal bases or walk, DOES consistently sting the ball around the diamond. Think Howie Kendrick. (Who also is declining as his free-swinging ways catch up to him.)
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(3) High career BABIP. Sanchez' lifetime BABIP, though he's right-handed and not super fast, is .329. Very impressive. Given his LD% and GB%, he obviously gets on top of the ball and stings it real good. That could work at Safeco.
I don't think that Sanchez is QUITE as scary as his eye ratio suggests, but ... don't get carried away on this guy. An All-Star he is not. You putting Howie Kendrick on the All-Star team this year?
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(4) Defense.
Sanchez is evidently a plus defender at second base, and several years ago, he was apparently a Gold Glover at third.
Now, Freddy Sanchez is not my type of player, but if you think of him as a glove specialist with a Howie Kendrick bat... well, sure.
Compared to Adrian Beltre at 3B -- if Sanchez were still great with the glove at 3B -- I'd probably take Sanchez. Sanchez would give me a nice hard 100 OPS+ line around .300/.330/.400, and I'll take that and run vs. what Adrian was doing. I'd rather have the consistent AVG than the occasional PWR.
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=== Dr's Prognosis ===
Personally don't think that Freddy Sanchez is anything near All-Star level, but he's quite comparable to Adrian Beltre in overall value and skillset.
Could Sanchez stick at third? Why wouldn't he? Players move from 2B to 3B when they get older, not the other way around. It's step-and-dive. Sanchez hasn't lost his hands. I have total confidence that he could move right back to 3B and excel there.
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Though definitely not my kind of player, I've got to admit that in absolute terms, Sanchez is a quality ML ballplayer.
Considering that the M's have a PCL left side of the diamond, a Beltre-comparable could help the M's quite a bit.
In the short term,
Dr D