Sell High Candidate: Why Now Is The Time To Deal Miguel Sano

by Eric Stashin (aka The Rotoprofessor)

One of the notable players who fell short of our Updated Top 15 Third Baseman rankings (click here to view) was Miguel Sano.  While it speaks to the depth of the position, to an extent, it also makes sense that some were surprised by his omission.  Just look at the numbers entering Thursday’s game:

.314 (27-86), 8 HR, 27 RBI, 21 R, 0 SB

Considering that he’s hitting the ball hard (23.5% line drive rate, 56.9% Hard%) and drawing plenty of walks (18.9% walk rate) it would make sense to be buying in.  However that’s where the positive numbers seem to end, with the questions quickly mounting based on some of the other underlying metrics.

Strikeouts – 33.0% strikeout rate, 13.6% SwStr%
Sano is swinging and missing, a lot, and it’s right on par with his career 14.6% SwStr%.  He’s particularly struggled to make contact against breaking balls (18.18% Whiff%) and offspeed pitches (26.09% Whiff%), so it makes sense that he’s seeing fewer “hard” pitches then he did previously (57.78% to 52.25%).  Strikeouts have consistently been an issue since arriving in the Majors and it doesn’t appear like that’s going away any time soon.

Luck – .442 BABIP
Yes he’s hitting the ball hard, but that doesn’t justify this type of inflated BABIP.  It’s going to regress, and quite significantly (he posted a .329 mark in ’16), and when coupled with the strikeouts that means the average is going to tumble.  A career .277 hitter in the minors, it wouldn’t be shocking to see him see his average plummet 50 points or more.

HR/FB – 33.33%
He has a lot of power, but is there really a chance that he maintains this type of mark?  Couple that with the potential that his fly ball rate drops at least a little bit (currently 47.1%, another number working against his average/BABIP) and there’s a good chance that his power slows down a bit.

Conclusion
Those three items loom large, and they ultimately are going to lead to a significant regression across the board.  If you can extract top dollar for him he’s an ideal sell high candidate, as his value is never going to be higher.  Kick the tires and see what you can get.

Sources – Fangraphs, Brooks Baseball, MILB.com

Make sure to check out all of our updated rankings: