With the information that Byron Buxton is eyeing up a return to heart area, the Minnesota Twins have fairly a little bit of flexibility on the heavy finish of the defensive spectrum. After they want some thump and don’t care a lot in regards to the defensive penalties, the Twins can select from quite a lot of designated hitters, left fielders, and first basemen: Matt Wallner, Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach, and most lately Carlos Santana.
Santana, who will flip 38 simply after Opening Day, has been round so lengthy he’s the one cause anybody remembers Casey Blake. By now, you already know what he’ll present: Numerous walks, a bit energy, and first rate protection at first base. Santana’s final season of two.0 WAR or extra was 2019, and after spending 10 of his first 11 seasons in Cleveland, he’s bounced round fairly a bit; that is his fifth group for the reason that begin of the 2022 season.
In different phrases, he’s a second-division starter at first base or DH, which is an archetype of participant we’ve had pegged since time immemorial. And to not put too tremendous a degree on it: A veteran DH who hits 5 Central Division groups in a five-season span is form of like a rock band extending its profession by enjoying the state honest circuit. You continue to need to see REO Speedwagon, however possibly not as a lot as you probably did in 1981.
Certainly the Twins know that, and for one 12 months at $5.25 million, they don’t even want Santana to play every single day with the intention to come out forward on this funding. Just like the Blue Jays and Justin Turner, they’re hoping to get one final productive season out of a man who was a extremely good hitter for the earlier decade, whereas operating the danger that that is the 12 months his bat lastly offers up and goes to reside on that farm upstate.
There are three causes the Twins have been capable of get Santana for lower than half what Toronto paid for Turner. First, Turner can… effectively, I feel “play second base” might be stronger phrasing than I’d like to make use of. However he can stand there with a glove with out getting the bends. Second, Turner was a greater hitter than Santana final 12 months — actually, for the previous 5 years — and the indicators of his decline are much less pronounced than Santana’s. Third, whereas Santana nonetheless has glorious strike zone judgment, his stroll charge in 2023 was the bottom of his profession by a ways, and his energy and high quality of contact numbers have been on the decline principally for the reason that pandemic, a quick renaissance in 2022 however.
Santana can nonetheless be a helpful offensive contributor, even perhaps an above-average hitter general, if he will get his stroll charge again up into the 14% vary, as a substitute of hovering round 10%. However whether or not he does so is much less fascinating to me than what he represents for the way forward for first base and DH general.
His entire profession, Santana has been an on-base machine regardless of placing up pedestrian numbers as a hitter particularly. In 2019, he hit .281/.397/.515; that’s the one season wherein he posted a .270 batting common or a .500 slugging share. He solely has one different full season every of hitting .260 or slugging .460. However even with half a decade’s value of decline part charge stats on his ledger, Santana nonetheless has about the identical profession OBP (.356) as Xander Bogaerts and about the identical profession wRC+ (116) as Ian Happ.
That’s as a result of his profession stroll charge, 14.8%, is identical as Mike Trout’s. They’re tied for fifth amongst lively hitters, only a fraction behind Max Muncy and Bryce Harper.
Possibly it is a little bit of the Baader-Meinhof impact. Joe Mauer — one other Twin, a former catcher-turned-first baseman with an OBP-over-power offensive profile — simply acquired elected to the Corridor of Fame. (As a result of all information is native, I’ll point out that in line with Wikipedia, the phrase “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” first appeared in a 1994 letter to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. When you’re conscious of the Twin Cities, you see them in every single place.) And personally, I used to be simply mulling over a alternative of first basemen in my Diamond Thoughts league draft: Nolan Schanuel, Ryan Noda, or LaMonte Wade Jr.
What do these gamers have in widespread? OBP over energy, at a place that — till lately — tended to prioritize the latter.
Final season, seven gamers posted an OBP of at the very least .340 with a SLG below .440 whereas taking 400 or extra plate appearances and enjoying at the very least 60% of their video games at first base or DH. Within the Wild Card period, 2010 is the one season with extra gamers assembly these standards.
There’s nothing significantly compelling about these particular arbitrary cutoffs, and even the marginally totally different set I’m about to throw at you. Solely that they illustrate a degree that’s going to leap out when you see the next graph. That is the variety of gamers at any place, per 12 months of the Wild Card period, who had an OBP of .340 or higher and a SLG of .450 or higher in at the very least 400 PA:
From 1995 till about 2010, the run-scoring surroundings went up and down year-to-year, however within the 2010s, the 2 qualities diverged. Energy numbers returned to the peaks of the steroid period, significantly through the juiced ball interval of the late 2010s, whereas league-wide OBP plummeted amid skyrocketing strikeout charges. The nadir got here within the early 2020s, which led to the crackdown in sticky stuff, the pitch clock, and new fielder positioning guidelines. And certain sufficient, offense rebounded in 2023.
Reasonably than monitor particular person seasons at arbitrary endpoints, let’s have a look at league-wide numbers. Batting common makes up a fraction — often greater than half — of each OBP and SLG. The primary a part of each getting on base and accumulating whole bases is registering base hits. ISO, um, isolates how good a hitter is at accumulating whole bases past singles, whereas an equal stat for OBP would do the identical for walks, hit-by-pitch, and the opposite technique of reaching first base. We don’t really want one, as a result of OBP and common use totally different denominators, which might make the maths a bit bushy. And walks make up virtually all the OBP-to-batting common hole such that stroll charge alone is a helpful proxy.
However, let’s have a look at the league-wide ISO, and the way a lot it fluctuates when in comparison with the distinction between the league-wide OBP and the league-wide batting common:
Once more, there’s an enormous spike in ISO within the late 2010s. Energy on the whole is extra unstable than OBP; since 1995, the league-wide ISO has been as excessive as .183 (in 2019) or as little as .135 (in 2014), a distinction of 48 factors, or 36%. In case you take out 2020, when every part was a bit out of whack, the distinction between league-wide OBP and batting common has solely assorted by 12 factors, or 20%.
5 years in the past, energy was extraordinarily low cost and plentiful; on-base skill was not. So the place just a few years in the past the league’s DH and first base positions have been populated with comparatively low-OBP, high-SLG gamers, as a result of they have been a dime a dozen, we’re seeing a shift towards high-OBP, comparatively low-SLG hitters in these positions now because it turns into simpler to get on base however more durable to hit residence runs.
I don’t know if the sudden proliferation of Santana-type hitters on the left finish of the defensive spectrum is something greater than a coincidence. As fascinating a participant as Noda is, I’m undecided the A’s have any particular curiosity in him apart from the truth that he owns a primary baseman’s mitt and makes the league minimal. However we could be seeing a shift towards OBP over energy in these main offensive positions.
