August 27, 2016

The Ridiculous Gary Sanchez

Playing in just his 23rd career game and 21st of the season, Gary Sanchez just hit his 11th home run. According to the Yankees broadcast, he is the first player in MLB history to hit 11 home runs in his first 23 games. In 2016, he is now 32 for 79 with 18 extra base hits, good for a .405 BA and a .911 slugging percentage. He is doing this as a catcher, a position not really known for it’s offense, unless you spent the last 90 years watching the Yankees. Sanchez is 23 years old, so the Yankees should get his entire prime. I doubt he will continue to slug .900, but a high BA catcher who slugs .500 will be extremely valuable.

The Yankees lead the Orioles 5-4 as the Orioles just hit back to back home runs in the top of the fifth inning.

1 thought on “The Ridiculous Gary Sanchez

  1. pft

    A lot of people were asking the same questions about Trevor Story that are asking them again with Gary Sanchez.

    Story was a guy who hit 10 HR in April which matched his minor league total for HR in all of 2015 (over 500 AB) , almost half his AB coming in the hitter friendly PCL. In 2016, he hit 4 of his first 10 HR at Coors, but it is April so the cold takes away some of the altitude effects

    Since April, his HR rate stabilized and he hit 17 HR in 280 AB. Still well above his minor league rate, but no Babe Ruth

    Gary is of course a guy known to have some power, but he only had 10 HR in 285 AB in Scranton. Now he has 11 HR in only 80 something AB in MLB. Todays HR was his first YS3 cheapie

    The MLB ball is juiced relative to the minor league ball. This is why some guys who hit a lot of fly balls increase their HR production when jumping to MLB, at least those who make contact do. Gary, like Story will have some regression in their HR rate, but the MLB ball will keep their power numbers elevated.

    Here is the link to the report showing the differences in the ball. Its a bit dated, but I see no evidence the balls are the same now.

    http://baseball.physics.illinois.edu/UML2000.pdf

    “The Major League balls are manufactured in Costa Rica and have a compressed corksphere per the specifications. The Minor League balls are manufactured in China and have a cork center as specified in “1996 Minor League Baseball Proposal”. This cork center is the likely source for the decrease in per
    formance, which results in a comparable Minor League ball hit of 391.8 ft under
    the same conditions as the Major League balls. Small samples of 1998 MLB baseballs were also tested. The 1998 MLB baseball had a comparable batted-ball distance of 400.5 ft.

    This article supports the theory as well

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-juiced-balls-the-new-steroids/

    ReplyReply

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