Watch Out, Miguel Sano's Bat Is Starting to Click

After not getting much of a tune up to the season, as a result of his positive COVID-19 test, Sano struggled out of the gates. Through his first 13 games, Sano had a dreadful .111/.149/.356 slash line. The main reason for Sano’s struggles was his alarming swing and miss rate, which lead to a lot of strikeouts. In those 13 games, Sano took 96 swings and whiffed on a staggering 46 of them, for a whiff rate of 46.9%. With such little time to prepare for the start of the season, it should come as no surprise that Sano needed some time to get back used to the speed of in game pitching.

As Ted Schwerzler pointed out, this issue seemed to be one more of timing than poor pitch selection. Sano’s chase rate through those first 13 games was just 20.3%, which was easily below his career average of 24.9%. This was an encouraging sign, as it meant he was seeing the ball well, despite his lack of timing and ability to make contact.

Another thing holding Sano back was his lack of success on balls in play, as his BABIP stood at just .105. While a lot of this can be explained by the number of popups and high flyballs Sano hit, which generally leads to a lower BABIP, Sano also had some bad batted ball luck which contributed to this too. During that time, Sano had four batted balls with an expected batting average above .500 that resulted in outs. If those would have gone the other way, his BABIP would have tripled up to .315. That just shows how a little luck here or there early on can drastically change a player’s fortunes.

In the 12 games that Sano has played since, Sano has really started to turn it on, with a much more impressive .395/.521/.763 slash line. This is due in large part to Sano gathering eight doubles, two home runs and ten walks in just 48 plate appearances over that time. So, this brings forward the question, has the timing suddenly clicked with Sano, or is something else going on?

The first place we will look to try and answer that question is in his whiff rate. Surprisingly, this metric has barely improved, despite Sano’s drastic turnaround in success. In the past 12 games, Sano’s whiff rate was still an atrocious 42.3%. Given that this played so much into Sano’s early struggles, it is hard to believe he could be playing so much better without improving much in this key area.

Instead, the reason for Sano’s improved success has actually been from the drastic turnaround on the balls he has put in play. He has lowered his average launch angel down from 27.2 degrees in the first 13 games, to a much more optimal 18.5 degrees in the last 12. As a result, those hard-hit popups and flyballs are now peppering the gaps for a seemingly relentless barrage of doubles. This is highlighted by his BABIP that stands at an incredible .722 during this stretch. While Sano is certainly receiving some good batted ball luck to have that high of a BABIP, you can’t put it all on luck either, as Sano has an expected BABIP of .529 on the 18 balls he has put in play since this hot streak started on August 11th. It also helps when Sano can just take the fielders out of play and mash home runs way over the fence like this one.

https://twitter.com/MLBONFOX/status/1297325578882875396

As we can see from the data, it’s not the frequency in which Sano is putting the ball in play that is making the difference, but rather what he has done with the ball when he does put it in play. Since this hot steak started, Sano has a blistering 100.4 MPH average exit velocity. For reference, in the five full seasons since Statcast started measuring average exit velocity, there has only been one recorded season of an average exit velocity above 95 MPH, and that was Aaron Judge in 2019, who had a 96.0 MPH average exit velocity in 102 games.

Miguel Sano still has some work to do on his timing to keep cutting down on his whiff rate. However, it does appear that something certainly has clicked with Sano’s swing, and that something is allowing him to drive the baseball with the proper trajectory to do damage, as opposed to just missing the pitch and hitting a popup or a towering flyball that gets caught in the outfield. With Sano’s bat back to form, he should be able to start providing some protection to the middle of the order, as opposed to hoping we can get any production from him at all hitting out of the eight hole.

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