Minnesota Twins’ Miguel Sano could be due for a slump
He may have recently lost his “prospect” label, but Minnesota Twins third baseman/designated hitter Miguel Sano is one of the hottest hitters in Major League Baseball. He homered for the second night in a row against the Yankees Tuesday, and since Aug. 5, he is crushing pitching at a .314/.368/.667 clip, which includes five home runs. In 40 games as a major leaguer, Sano is hitting .285/.394/.555. In short, he is doing everything the Twins hoped he would.
It’s an anecdote we’ve heard a lot this season; high-ranking prospect gets promoted, makes immediate impact and sports writers wax poetic about the sparkling careers ahead of them. “Baseball is being taken over by youth” is a common narrative in 2015, but that doesn’t mean the game is just letting the prodigies take over without experiencing growing pains.
Sano’s thundering bat rivals those of the best rookies in the game. Based on Sano’s offensive profile and minor league production, however, a significant regression is in order. For example, Sano’s minor league career batting average on balls in play was .332, but he’s hitting at a .411 clip in the majors. Another reason a slump might be coming is that other über-prospects with strikingly similar offensive repertoires have experienced them:
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Joey Gallodebuted on June 2, and by June 17 he’d already hit five home runs and was slugging .580. He also struck out 21 times over that stretch, and from June 18 to June 29 he slugged .270 with no home runs and 22 strikeouts.
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These players have more in common than their gaudy power potential. A key source of their slumps is their propensity to swing and miss, even on pitches in the strike zone: Entering play Wednesday, among players with at least 160 plate appearances, Sano, Bryant and Pederson were 317th, 319th and 323rd, respectively, in contact rate within the strike zone according to FanGraphs and PITCHf/x.
That’s out of 327 hitters. (If Gallo had enough plate appearances, he would’ve been dead last by a long shot.)
This doesn’t mean these hitters are doomed to be busts. Far from it. Chris Davis, Brandon Belt and Justin Upton have significant offensive value with similar contact rates and Pederson, Sano and Bryant all have track records of drawing walks.
If Bryant and Pederson are used as templates, Sano’s slump will begin in the middle of September. Bryant’s slump began after he had 246 plate appearances, while Pederson’s began after 220. Entering play Thursday, Sano had 165. If he continues to get four plate appearances per game, he’ll reach 200 near the end of August and 240 around 10 days later.
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Sano, however, has a hidden blessing that suggests he may not experience a slump at all. If it takes slightly more than 200 plate appearances for pitchers to make adjustments to a mashing rookie, when Sano gets to that point there won’t be enough season left for his offensive production to swoon for a frustratingly long time. It’ll likely take more than 500 PAs for his production to completely normalize, but Sano will only have around 300 by season’s end. Bryant’s and Pederson’s slumps lasted well over a month–in Pederson’s case it’s pushing three–but Sano would be in line for a slump that lasted roughly three weeks, possibly less.
With the Twins fading out of playoff contention, Sano would have the entire offseason to adjust to pitchers’ adjustments and work on any holes in his game. He won’t play enough to overtake Astros shortstop Carlos Correa for American League Rookie of the Year, but his season is impressive, and he, Bryant and Pederson will be looked at when Gallo, Aaron Judge and Adam Duvall are knocking on the door to the majors in 2016.