Say it Ain’t Sano

According to our prospect guru Kiley McDaniel, Miguel Sano was the game’s 15th best prospect and the Twins second best. After missing the entire 2014 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, he figured to prove he was healthy at Double-A this season before eventually (hopefully) earning a promotion to Triple-A. Perhaps a September cup of coffee was in the cards, though more likely he was expected to make his anticipated Twins debut in 2016. Instead, the Twins decided to get aggressive and promote the 22 year old to the Majors, completely skipping Triple-A. This is typically a risky move as anecdotally hitters endure a tougher transition jumping straight from Double-A to the Majors than do pitchers. Sano, however, never received that memo.

Before getting to the obvious and what we knew of Sano as a hitter, let’s discuss something that caught my eye first. With just 125 plate appearances, Sano doesn’t come close to qualifying for any of our leaderboards. But check out his batted ball type distribution. You see that line drive rate? It’s at a mighty impressive 29.5%. That’s just a smidge higher than the current league leader among qualified batters. Hitting line drives is actually a skill for batters.

In his minor league career, Sano posted a .332 BABIP. That’s less impressive than a career Major League mark that high, of course, but it’s still pretty good. The two RoS projections call for BABIP marks of .308 and .295, which are a bit above and just below the league average. But if Sano continues to rope liners, he should easily outperform those projections. Furthermore, Sano has popped up just once. You know who else features that delightful high line drive and low pop-up rate combination? Joey Votto, he of the career .355 BABIP.

We know that Sano cannot possibly maintain his current .411 BABIP or anywhere close for that matter. But his batted ball type distribution does suggest a highly inflated mark which could ensure his BABIP doesn’t completely collapse the rest of the way. Let’s not forget though that Votto uses the entire field, as evidenced by Pull, Center and Opposite percentages all above 30% for his career. On the other hand, Sano has been a serious pull hitter, which normally negatively correlates with BABIP.

Let’s move on to the things we knew to expect from Sano. His calling card was massive power and he received a Raw Power scouting grade of 80 and future Game Power grade of 70 from our prospect man. He posted a ridiculous .286 ISO over his minor league career, with a homer every 15.4 at bats for a 600 at-bat pace of 39 long balls. So far, that home run power has certainly translated. His 29.4% HR/FB rate would lead baseball if he qualified and his 311.9 foot batted ball distance (just 12 flies + homers are accounted for in this number) would rank fourth. He only has five homers because he has oddly hit fly ball less than 30% of the time. Darn kid is too busy hitting line drives! His 50.8% Pull% would rank 10th and is exactly what you like to see from a straight up power force.

Of course, with the power comes strikeouts, and lots of them. He routinely sat in the mid-20% range in strikeout rate in the minors, though he did improve to post his best non-Rookie League mark at Double-A this season. So we knew strikeouts were part of the package, but it didn’t look worrisome for a man with his power potential. Unfortunately, he has struck out 34.4%, which would rank as the second highest in baseball and his 15.1% SwStk% would rank eighth. He has excellent plate discipline though in that he swings at pitches outside the zone far less than the average player. He just makes significantly less contact when he does swing and frequently misses on pitches inside the zone as well.

So let’s figure out what we might project for next year. We’ll do so by looking at some statistical comps.

Chris Davis – The two are similar in terms of walk and strikeout rates and possess big power. Davis also owns an excellent batted ball profile heavy on line drives while minimizing the pop-ups. The only real difference between the two is that Davis is a fly ball hitter. Sano had been in the minors, but not so yet in the Majors.

Joc Pederson – Like Sano, Pederson walks at a high rate, but also strikes out often. He has displayed excellent power as well. But his batted ball profile differs greatly, as he has hit liners at a low rate, more pop-ups than the average bear and has gotten his fly ball rate just above 40%.

Kris Bryant – Bryant is the second rookie that make a good comp to Sano and probably a better one than Pederson. He has posted similar walk and strikeout rates to Sano, though his power, although pretty good, hasn’t been quite as good as we may have expected it to be. Bryant’s batted ball profile looks like a combination of Davis’ and Pederson’s, hitting fly balls as often as the former, but hitting liners nearly as infrequently as the latter.

Davis is probably the best name to consider when thinking about Sano’s upside next year. He’s at risk of hurting your average given a high strikeout rate, but if he could sustain most of that strong batted ball distribution, he should be able to post a much better than average BABIP, which could boost his average into respectable territory. He has already locked himself into the middle of the order so his RBI and runs scored totals should be good. He’ll need to get that fly ball rate back up, and if he does, 30 homers is reachable.