Pablo Sandoval is going to win the American League batting title in 2017.
I think that’s covers me on the ‘bold prediction’ front, right? There’s no need to add anything else: ‘Pablo Sandoval, batting champ’ has sufficient boldness, all by itself. I can just go ahead and post this and call it a day.
Before I defend this projection, I’ll confess my biases. I’m a Red Sox fan, and I’m a fan of Pablo Sandoval. He was on the shortlist of my very favorite players in the National League during his tenure with the Giants, and I was thrilled when the Red Sox signed him as a free agent. Panda is an easy player to like: he is an aggressive hitter who tends to make hard contact, and he was, at least in his prime, a surprisingly adept defensive player. Most importantly, he seems to have fun on the diamond: he played the game like it’s a game.
It’s been hard, these last two years, to remember that Sandoval as being the same guy who has been rostered on the Boston team these past two years. I don’t think I’m underselling it to say that his time as a Red Sock has been Dickens-level bleak: after posting a less-than-impressive .245/.292/.366 batting line for the last-place 2015 squad, Sandoval arrived in camp visibly out of shape, and promptly lost his starting position to Travis Shaw. He lasted all of seven at-bats before a shoulder injury ended his season. Cue image of the soot-stained orphan waif pleading for a crust of bread.
I am, by nature, inclined towards optimism, but the notion that Sandoval would return as an effective major league player after two years in the wilderness slips past optimism, and teeters towards full-on delusion. Nonetheless, I think a comeback is coming.
Here’s why.
1. Sandoval has had a terrific spring.
One of my least favorite ‘truths’ bandied about this time of the year is that spring training statistics are useless. They are largely useless: the sample sizes allowed in spring training are too small, and many of the players we pay attention to aren’t trying to win baseball games…they are trying to get ready for the season ahead. I don’t care that much if Max Scherzer has a good spring ERA, so long as his velocity is fine and he’s not walking more batters than he strikes out.
But sometimes a player’s spring performance matters, and sometimes a player’s performance can make strong hints at what kind of season is coming.
Pablo Sandoval’s spring matters because he is fighting for his job: while the Boston Red Sox have said that the job was Sandoval’s, this is a team that is looking towards a title run: if Sandoval can’t handle the work, they’ll find someone else who can.
And the results have been interesting. Here are Sandoval’s batting numbers from this spring:
|
AB
|
H
|
2B
|
HR
|
BB
|
SO
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
|
65
|
22
|
7
|
5
|
1
|
12
|
.338
|
.348
|
.677
|
I find this a huge positive going into the season, but not for the reasons you might think. I don’t care one iota that Sandoval is hitting .338, and I’m not all that impressed by the .677 slugging percentage. Those are fine marks, but it’s spring training: we’re dealing with small samples. Maybe he got lucky and had a dozen at-bats against Justin Verlander. What do I know?
What seems telling about Sandoval’s spring is that he is playing his game. The part I like the best about this batting line is the worst part of the batting line above: his absolutely abominable strikeout-to-walk ratio of twelve-to-one. That’s terrible. I love that it’s so bad.
I love it because it suggests that he is playing with confidence. He is hitting the way he’s always preferred to hit: by swinging. He’s not spending his training at-bats trying to work counts, or draw walks…he’s trying to square the ball up and rip it into the outfield. That’s great. That’s where his strength as a player lies.
The other number that gives me confidence is equally absurd: I like how many RBI’s he has. Last I checked, he was leading spring training players in runs batted in.
Well…what do runs batted in matter?
Nothing at all. Except…it is one thing for a team to state publicly that they stand behind a player. It is a separate thing entirely for a team to show that faith on the field. The Red Sox aren’t hiding Sandoval at the bottom of the order: they’ve been putting him into situations where he has the chance to drive in runs. The team isn’t just telling Sandoval that he has a job; they are sending the message that they expect him to produce at the position.
It’s been a terrible two years: there is no way to sugar coat the recent past, and no one would have blamed the Red Sox if the team had decided to cut bait with Pablo Sandoval. The team has chosen to try again, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for not doing it half-heartedly. The Red Sox are giving Sandoval an honest-to-God chance to contribute meaningfully to the team, and so far, it looks like he’s risen to the challenge.
2. Sandoval profiles as a high-average hitter.
We tend to dismiss batting average in our little community, but for a few hitters batting average comprises the bulk of their offensive value. Sandoval is one of those players: he doesn’t walk much, and he isn’t a particularly prodigious power hitter, and he isn’t a contact-focused hitter. He’s a good hitter, but most of his value with the bat shows up in the first column of his triple-slash line.
Twice in his career, Sandoval has posted impressive batting averages: he finished second to Hanley Ramirez in the 2009 NL batting race, and he posted an impressive .315 average in 2011. His career average currently stands at .287, which is pretty impressive considering that most of his career was played in San Francisco.
My point is that a successful comeback season for Sandoval will show most prominently in his batting line. It is unlikely that he will magically post strong defensive metrics going forward, and I don’t expect a late power spike or a sharp uptick in his contact rate going forward. If Sandoval improves meaningfully, that improvement will show up most prominently in his batting average.
And it is important to note that Sandoval’s average, for the bulk of his career, has been held in check by playing his home games in San Francisco’s AT&T Park, a stadium that hampers offensive production, particularly for left-handed hitters. Here are FanGraph’s park factors by handedness for AT&T:
|
Team
|
1B as LH
|
1B as RH
|
2B as LH
|
2B as RH
|
3B as LH
|
3B as RH
|
HR as LH
|
HR as RH
|
|
Giants
|
100
|
97
|
97
|
96
|
120
|
108
|
81
|
86
|
Sandoval is a switch-hitter, but he is better from the left-side of the plate, where he gets most of his playing time.
Speaking of parks…
3. Fenway Park makes batting champs, and the park is due.
Let’s look at Fenway’s handedness factors, compared to AT&T Park:
|
Team
|
1B as LH
|
1B as RH
|
2B as LH
|
2B as RH
|
3B as LH
|
3B as RH
|
HR as LH
|
HR as RH
|
|
Giants
|
100
|
97
|
97
|
96
|
120
|
108
|
81
|
86
|
|
Red Sox
|
104
|
103
|
121
|
110
|
124
|
87
|
89
|
104
|
Fenway hampers left-handed power hitters: it is the third toughest park in the majors for a left-handed hitter to homer in. But Fenway is terrific when it comes to a left-handed hitter collecting singles, doubles, and triples. Fenway is the second-best park in baseball for left-handed singles and triples (behind Coors), and it’s the best park for left-handed doubles.
Anyone who has seen a picture of Fenway Park can understand why: the right field is huge and oddly angled, and someone put a giant wall in short left field. This means that left-handed hitters benefit from lots of space for their line drives to fall in, while chalking up a few fluke doubles on opposite-field fly balls.
This is why the Red Sox have done so well leading the league in batting average: in the team’s history, they can claim twenty-four batting champs, all of them coming in the sixty-eight seasons between Jimmie Foxx’s 1935 batting crown, and Bill Mueller’s 2003 title. And while Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski and Wade Boggs account for thirteen of those batting titles, Fenway’s made batting champs out of Carney Lansford, Billy Goodman, and Pete Runnels (twice). That’s not even counting Dale Alexander: he won a batting title in 1932, splitting time between Detroit and Boston. He hit .250 as a Tiger in 1932…and then he hit .372 after he joined the Red Sox.
That list is only a partial one: it makes no accounting of Jim Rice’s best years, or the best years of Dustin Pedroia. Johnny Pesky didn’t win a batting title, but he came in 2nd twice and third another time, retiring with a .307 average. Bobby Doerr narrowly lost a crowd to Lou Boudreau 1944 title (.327 to .325). Hell, Mo Vaughn hit .319 over a five-year span in Fenway…. there weren’t a lot of infield hits in that .319 clip.
Fenway Park creates high averages, especially for left-handed hitters, and Fenway’s been in a little bit of a rut in recent years. We’re now fourteen years out from Bill Mueller’s batting title: the old ballpark is due.
Pablo Sandoval isn’t going to hit a lot of homers: his ceiling in the power department is about fifteen or twenty homers, so we can assume that he’s not going to lose too many homers on flyball caught at the warning track. And I doubt that Sandoval, even slimmed down, is going to leg out too many triples this year. Where he’s going to make ground on his batting average…if he makes ground…is in his rate of singles and doubles. Sandoval’s great talent as a hitter is driving the ball out of the infield, and Fenway Park is a stadium that has always rewarded left-handed hitters who can do that.
I think Sandoval is the next guy the old stadium is going to reward: my bold prediction for 2017 is that Panda is going to end the 2017 season with a batting title to put on the shelf.
Why not? It’s Opening Day and thirty teams are sitting in first place. Anything can happen.
Dave Fleming is a writer in New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.