It is often said that history repeats itself. Nothing is more evident than in the fantasy baseball game.
Young prospect with potential gets signed for millions of dollars and rips through the minor league system, resulting in him getting called up to the majors mid-season and having success. The small sample size of stats gets extrapolated to a full season and the hype train goes from a chug to full steam ahead.
More often than not, though, the player fizzles and the “I won’t fall for the banana-in-the-tailpipe” routine begins. Can New York Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez be one of the few to break through?
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Sanchez was signed out of the Dominican Republic as an 18-year-old back in 2009. He was given the largest signing bonus ($3 million) ever for a teenager by the Yankees organization. Sanchez was the “next” Jesus Montero.
Remember that guy? Sorry Yankee fans…and Mariners fans.
Baseball America’s scouting report back in 2011 indicated that Sanchez “already has plus raw power…a good swing path and the bat speed to catch up to good fastballs…He has no significant holes.”
He spent six and half years in the minors, hitting double-digit home runs in every season except his first. Then, last year he hit 10 home runs in 71 Triple-A games before getting called up to the big club, where he went ballistic and clubbed 20 home runs in 53 games. Oh, by the way, he did that with a .299 batting average.
As a result, the hype train wasn’t just full steam ahead this offseason. It was Thomas the Train on crack!!!
As of March 4, 2017, FantasyPros’ ECR (Expert Consensus Rankings) has Sanchez as the second catcher behind Buster Posey and the 68th overall player. In terms of ADP, Sanchez is the second catcher and 49th overall player being selected.
He’s played 53 games in the majors and he’s already in the Posey-stratosphere! Is it warranted?
In 229 major league plate appearances last season, the .299 average came with a .317 BABIP. Nothing outlandish with that. The thing is, though, he hit above .290 in only two of his minor league seasons.
The 10.5% walk rate was good, but the 24.9% strikeout rate was high. That coincided with a 13% swinging strike rate. The contact rate in the strike zone was very good (85.1%), but overall contact rate was only 71%.
In terms of batted ball profile, Sanchez had a hard contact rate of 41.8%. Only 13 players in all of baseball had a rate above 40% last season.
He had an HR/FB rate of 40%. The highest mark in MLB history was from Ryan Howard, with a 39.5% HR/FB mark in 2006.
The GB/FB rate was 1.44. That mark would have placed him in the top 50 of MLB last year.
The ISO was .358. That is a ridiculous number. Last year, David Ortiz led the league with a .305 mark.
A .358 ISO would have placed him 29th all-time. Holy moly…Barry Bonds had a .536 ISO in 2001.
Do you think any of those rates are sustainable? Exactly.
When Posey came up to the majors, he only struck out 12% of the time. His swinging strike rate was 10%.
Since that rookie season, he’s never had a strikeout rate above 16% and a swinging strike rate above 8%. His contact rates have consistently been in the 80% range. But Sanchez is all about power!
Ok. In MLB history, there have been 44 instances in which a catcher has hit 30+ home runs. In only six of those instances, has the player had a strikeout rate above 20%. And two of those were from Todd Hundley.
I’m not trying to be a hater here. I love the potential of Sanchez and think he’s great for dynasty. But for this year? The price to acquire is just too expensive.
MLB is all about adjustments. We’ve seen it time and time again. It’s not going to be different this time. The league will try new things on Sanchez this year, so there’s going to be an adjustment period.
The question is whether it will be a protracted process or not. My guess is that it will be.
Check out all of our 2017 fantasy baseball player profiles
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Stan Son is a featured writer at FantasyPros. To read more from Stan, check out his archive and follow him @Stan_Son.
