Anthony Santander’s a peculiar hitter. Right here, from left to proper, are Santander’s batting common, weighted on-base common, and slugging proportion by zone during the last three seasons:
See how crimson the 2 bins from the guts of the strike zone to the underside are? That’s the place you don’t wish to pitch Santander. He’s among the best low-ball hitters in baseball. He loves {golfing} pitches down there towards outfield partitions. He ought to’ve performed cricket.
Over the past three seasons, Santander’s hit .317 and slugged .622 in opposition to pitches throughout the backside third of the strike zone. That slugging proportion ranks among the many prime eight certified hitters within the recreation, proper up there with Yordan Alvarez, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, and Aaron Choose. You actually, actually don’t wish to pitch him there.
With breaking balls, particularly. Santander’s batted .345 in opposition to curveballs and sliders within the lower-third with a 52.7 per cent hard-hit charge since 2022. For reference, Giancarlo Stanton’s hard-hit charge in opposition to these pitches over the identical span is a virtually similar 53.1. Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, and Choose are within the low-to-mid 40’s.
Maybe the worst pitch you possibly can throw Santander is a slow-breaking ball that bends into the decrease third of the zone. Type of like this one:
Bear in mind all of the consternation over that? I spoke to folks with the Blue Jays that spring who had been flabbergasted by Christian Vazquez’s pitch name. An 0-0 breaking ball down-and-in to a left-handed energy hitter is unhealthy sufficient — but it surely’s worse in opposition to Santander.
Final season, Santander hit .368 with an .868 slug (!!!) in opposition to breaking balls from right-handers within the bottom-third of the zone. His 5 homers off these pitches had been second in MLB to solely Gunnar Henderson and Ezequiel Tovar. You simply don’t go down there in opposition to him.
Even a pitcher’s miss patterns in that space are fraught. Santander’s such an excellent low-ball hitter that he’s liable to plunge beneath the strike zone and smoke pitches off his shoelaces out of ballparks.
The underside of the strike zone varies for every hitter relying on their peak (to not point out every umpire’s interpretation of the zone) however sometimes averages round 18 inches off the bottom — or 1.5 toes. And since 2021, Santander has hit 9 dwelling runs in opposition to pitches lower than 1.5 toes off the bottom.
The one participant with extra over that span is Rafael Devers (coincidentally, present free agent and rumoured Blue Jays goal Pete Alonso ranks third, and Eduardo Escobar, who Toronto signed to a minor-league deal final spring, is fourth). Right here’s the bottom pitch hit for a house run off a pitcher — Joc Pederson hit a decrease one out in opposition to outfielder Wil Myers in 2022 — during the last 4 years:
And right here’s the second-lowest pitch to go away the yard in opposition to the Blue Jays since 2023 (Devers, naturally, has the decrease one):
Santander does issues like this due to his excessive lift-and-pull strategy. He led MLB in fly ball charge final season and ranked throughout the prime 30 in pull charge. Santander doesn’t hit the ball particularly exhausting — his Sixtieth-percentile hard-hit charge and 62nd-percentile common exit velocity final season had been pedestrian. However he nonetheless smacked 44 homers as a result of he tries to yank all the pieces to his pull facet.
Anthony Santander’s fly ball and pull charges
(MLB rank in brackets)
Do this constantly sufficient and also you’ll land some balls within the left or proper discipline seats. And whereas an inflated 17.1 per cent HR/FB charge final season — his profession common is 14.5 per cent — suggests Santander is unlikely to repeat a 40-homer yr, his strategy makes him a good wager for 30. Significantly contemplating he’ll now not should cope with Camden Yards’ insane left discipline wall and dimensions, which the Orioles overcorrected in 2022 and are simply now bringing again in.
Right here’s each non-homer ball Santander hit at the very least 330-feet to left at Camden Yards since 2022 overlayed on Rogers Centre’s dimensions:
That’s one other eight homers, straightforward. Rogers Centre is a couple of dozen toes shorter to right-centre, too, the place you will discover one other 8-10 balls from the final three years that didn’t depart Camden Yards however would’ve in Toronto. In the end, Santander is transferring from a ballpark that Statcast thought-about seven proportion factors under league common for dwelling runs during the last three years to 1 it judged as three factors above common — a ten per cent swing.
Now, Santander’s strategy isn’t with out its drawbacks. By attempting to elevate each pitch within the air, he inevitably runs into a substantial amount of pop-up contact — a really undesirable end result. Groundballs at the very least get misfielded or sneak by holes on occasion. However the league hit .015/.015/.017 on pop-ups final season, and Santander was essentially the most important contributor to these charges, main MLB with 66.
That’s after he hit MLB’s second-most pop-ups in each 2023 and 2022. Of the 195 he’s hit during the last three years, solely two have led to him reaching base because of balls misplaced within the solar. Contemplating it’s almost unimaginable for runners to advance on pop-up contact, you may as properly add the opposite 193 to his strikeout complete.
That wealth of unproductive outs, mixed with a league-average stroll charge and 18th-percentile dash velocity, places a substantial amount of strain on Santander to profit from the errors pitchers give him. And he tries to make use of his contact potential to get extra of these errors, trailing solely Matt Olson in foul balls since 2022. Anticipating Santander’s signing isn’t why the Blue Jays diminished the quantity of foul territory at Rogers Centre final season. But it surely received’t harm his trigger.
How do groups counter Santander’s peculiar strategy? By attempting to beat him to a spot on the prime of the zone with velocity. The common peak of all of the pitches Santander was thrown final season was 2.45 toes, the fourth-highest amongst certified hitters. And half of these pitches had been fastballs or cutters, the second-highest charge throughout MLB.
Pitchers try to maintain the ball elevated above Santander’s bat and throw it exhausting sufficient to reduce the time he has to execute his lofty swing. It’s not a foul technique. Final season, Santander hit .137 with a .229 xwOBA in opposition to four-seam fastballs thrown 95+ mph and situated within the higher third of the zone or increased. And Santander noticed extra of these pitches — 275 in all — than any hitter within the league. That’s the place you get him out.
One would think about the worst pitch Santander might face is a fastball with a low vertical strategy angle, which charts a flatter path to the plate than the common fastball’s extra downward slope. That creates the phantasm of a pitch rising. In actuality, it’s not dropping as a lot as hitters anticipate based mostly upon the bazillions of pitches they’ve seen previously, which the mind makes use of to acknowledge patterns and set off muscle reminiscence.
Pitchers like Joe Ryan, JP Sears, Luis Castillo, and Cristian Javier are among the many greatest in baseball at using this tactic. Of the 182 beginning pitchers to throw at the very least 200 fastballs final season, Ryan’s was the flattest. Sears’s was third-flattest; Castillo’s, seventh; and Javier’s, eighth.
Anthony Santander vs. flat fastballs
(Since 2017)
Flat heaters neutralize Santander. He is aware of they’re coming. He’s learn the scouting report. His swing merely doesn’t agree with them. He’s a mixed 5-for-29 (.172) in opposition to the above 4 pitchers in his profession. Don’t be shocked if the Blue Jays select a day they’re dealing with Ryan or Sears to get Santander a bit of relaxation going ahead.
Now, seeing so many elevated fastballs does permit Santander to take a seat on them in sure conditions. And simply as he can fish properly beneath the zone for pitches he can drive, he’s sometimes proven a capability to do the identical to pitches properly above the zone, too.
Though it naturally varies by hitter and umpire, the highest of the strike zone is usually someplace round 3.5 toes from the bottom. And Santander has 5 homers off pitches 3.5 toes or increased since 2022, tied for the Sixth-most in baseball. Final season, he led MLB in that unusual class.
Poor Kevin Gausman, who gave up that uber-low homer from the beginning of this text, was additionally on the fallacious finish of this one final yr, which went down because the fifth-highest pitch hit for a homer all season:
Santander has an odd behavior of coming by with these swings in massive spots, equivalent to this solo shot off Matt Strahm final June to tie a recreation within the eighth:
After which there’s this one off Bryan Abreu — the best pitch Santander hit out in 2024 — which helped the Orioles immediately overcome a three-run, eighth-inning deficit:
So, what can Blue Jays followers anticipate from Santander? About 30 homers, 60 pop-ups, and 600 foul balls. A ton of elevated warmth, a bunch of low breaking balls launched down the traces, and a handful of pitchers scratching heads after he’s whacked pitches he has no enterprise getting his bat head to over outfield partitions. A peculiar hitter, certainly.
