New York Yankees: Gary Sanchez is reminding us why he’s worth it
Defense Is Key
It’s no secret that coming into this season, Sanchez was one of the worst defensive catchers in Major League Baseball. Base runners thrived off of his errors, past balls, and drops. However, according to Yankees television analyst, David Cone, the 26-year-old has put plenty of work into fixing his defense.
On WFAN’s Boomer and Gio recently, Cone was willing to stick up for Sanchez telling them that he would’ve loved to pitch to a catcher like the current Bombers backstop. Cone went on to say that blocking balls in the dirt is the only poor area of his game. He also said that Sanchez worked on his core strength over the summer, which in return has helped him prevent many passed ball opportunities. In terms of his all-around ability to get a runner out however, Sanchez is one of the best in the business.
El Kraken has thrown out 34% of would-be baserunners trying to steal against him in his five-year career, which is above the league average. His ability to gun those runners down with his elite arm definitely plays a factor. According to Statcast, Sanchez tops out at 87.6 MPH on the gun when attempting to throw out a baserunner which puts him second in the Majors only behind Marlins catcher, Jorge Alfaro.
He’s sixth in the league in pop time (the time taken from the instant a pitch hits a catchers glove to the moment it strikes the glove of the target) towards second base and fifth in the league when throwing to third. Runners know that it’s a risk to go on the Yankee Catcher and he’s made it known with these impressive numbers.
In terms of framing, Sanchez is up there with some of the best catchers to ever step behind the plate. It’s never easy to frame hard-throwing pitchers and nobody is a better example of having to do it on a nightly basis quite like Sanchez. He has to catch pitchers that can all clock out over 100 MPH like Luis Severino, James Paxton, Dellin Betances, and quite possibly the hardest throwing closer ever in Aroldis Chapman. At that speed, its like asking somebody to catch a moving pill.
The sheer velocity of the pitch makes it difficult to corral back into the plate. It’s one of the reasons why a ball will get by him every once in a while. Catching a slew of triple-digit pitchers, most with hard sliders, is the 2019 version of catching a knuckle-curve. Credit Sanchez as not many fans will look past the numbers and see that he’s doing well when trying to catch some of the hardest throwers in baseball.