Danny Sanny, A Love Story

I have to be honest it wasn’t love at first sight. Truthfully I wasn’t really impressed. I thought you were just another hot schmotato on a good tear. My friend took you home, I thought he was taking the grenade for the rest of us. We all scoffed at him behind his back, sometimes to his face when he would gush about you. None of us thought you were for real, maybe we were just all jaded. After all you were a middle infidel from Minnesota, I’d been down that road before. But something happened to me, to all of us really. We started to become jealous of what the two of you had. We all started to look at our shortstops and wonder why they couldn’t be more like you. You guys were so happy, he went from just an average guy, 6th maybe in the standings to ascending to the crown. September came and went and the rest of were looking up. I made a promise to myself that day, that I would never let you slip through the cracks again. Danny Sanny I love you.

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Did I get a bit too real? Have I surpassed Grey’s Giancarlo infatuation level? Probably, but that’s okay. If loving Danny Santana is wrong, many of you say it is, than I don’t want to be right. In the opening paragraph I described how I fell in love with the man I affectionately call Danny Sanny. You can call him what you will, but it’s true Santana’s second half last year was preposterous. So let’s dig in and take a look at just how good it was. Then discuss what’s repeatable and what isn’t, because there is no way that level of awesome is sustainable. How awesome was Danny? How about .362 wOBA awesome, good enough for 27th in all of baseball over the second half. He also posted a .314 batting average, a 133 wRC+, an .830 OPS, and 51 runs. That was the highest run total in the bigs. Yeah, he scored more runs than Mike Trout. He also had the 22nd highest weighted runs above average or wRAA, a metric that measures how many runs a player contributes to their team compared to the average player. Santana’s wRAA was so high it was nearly double the next closest SS Jhonny Peralta at 6.6. Do yourself a favor and compare his second half to every other SS’s. Oh don’t worry I’ve provided a handy chart below measuring all of this out. 1. because I like all of you, and don’t want you to waste all your precious time. 2. because I really like Google sheets!

So as you can see he led all SS in runs, wRC+, wOBA, steals, ISO, Batting average, and Slugging. Yeah he was the best shortstop by a mile. Will this trend continue? Was it an aberration? No and probably, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a great value in drafts between pick 100-150. With all of this said it doesn’t mean the player is without flaws. For starters he strikes out a ton 24.7% to be exact, which is not good, in fact it was 21st worst in all of baseball during that very same magical second half. He also doesn’t walk much, 4.2% which was 19th worst. He also was aided by the second best BABIP in the second half behind only Jose Abreu. So he’s lucky, K’s a lot and doesn’t walk. Yuck! Hey not so fast!! He’s not the only good hitter in baseball that has a high k rate and a low walk rate. Adam Jones anyone? There’s also a ton of speed guys with low walk rates that are fantasy relevant. Players like Dee Gordon, Kolten Wong, Ian Kinsler, and Jose Reyes.

The biggest knock on Santana I’ve seen has been his BABIP and how it’s not sustainable due to his minor league track record. Let’s break this down and address it in two parts. His skill set, and then discuss his minor league track record. First off, speedy players with a make contact approach like Santana typically do have higher BABIP. Because they have a better chance of beating out ground balls than slower players. Simple right? Need more proof look at the top ten BABIP’s Starling Marte, Jose Altuve, Adam Eaton, Christian Yelich, Andrew McCutchen, and Josh Harrison. My point is with Santana’s skill set a higher BABIP is obtainable. While we’re at it look at Marte’s numbers, he’s another high k%, low BB% guy with high BABIP, and he’s being drafted in the top 40 picks in almost every draft. Here’s the thing Marte’s an outfielder, a position that’s significantly deeper than SS. I guess you’re buying the pedigree.

The second BABIP argument is his career BABIP in the minors of .332 between 2011-2014. This is true he did have a BABIP of .332 over a four year (really 3 1/4 year) period. The problem is this is significantly weighed down by his lower BABIP in 2011 (.317) and 2012 (.322). Starting in 2013 through the end of last season he posted BABIP’s of .353 (2013), .377 (AAA in 2014), and .405 (MLB 2014). Oh BTW that’s averages of .350 and above in 1,122 plate appearances across three levels. Not a small sample size. So why are experts basing their opinions of Santana off of minor league numbers from three and four years ago when Santana was 20 and 21 years of age? Lot’s of hitters make improvements as they move up through the minors. Actually all the good ones do, and there’s not just one way to develop. So do I expect Santana’s BABIP to be upwards of 400 again? No that’s unlikely, and quite frankly there’s a lot of luck involved with it. My point is it’s much more of a red flag/fluke for pitchers than hitters and Santana should maintain a high level of fantasy value even as his BABIP regresses toward the mean.