Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez is a 28-year-old, left-handed hitting, outfielder. The Jays traded Joey Loperfido to the Astros to pick him up. Loperfido will be 27 in May, so there isn\u2019t that much difference in age. S\u00e1nchez has played 580 MLB games and has a 4.8 bWAR. Loperfido has played 122 games and has a 1.1 bWAR. We could debate which player will be the most valuable for the rest of their careers, but, if we are talking this season, I\u2019d bet Jes\u00fas will be more valuable, and that\u2019s more important to the Jays at the moment.<\/p>\n
Jes\u00fas isn\u2019t a free agent until 2028.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez was traded from the Marlins to the Astros at the deadline last year. With the Marlins he was hitting .256\/.320\/.420, with the Astros .199\/.269\/.342. David Popkins, Jays hitting coach, told Keegan Matheson:<\/p>\n
Popkins: \u201cHe went over to Houston, and they had some ideas for him to change some things and I think they didn\u2019t quite resonate with his personality and who he is as a hitter. It kind of went more towards weakness prevention than his strengths, so we\u2019re shifting him back more towards, \u2018We want you to do what you do well.\u2019 Let\u2019s start there, then we can go elsewhere. We\u2019re just trying to see him have rhythm again and get his swing off. We\u2019re excited. He\u2019s had some good days the last couple of days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basically, \u2018the Astros ruined him\u2019. I always take these things with a grain of salt. I think if you can hit you can hit and a batting coach shouldn\u2019t be able to change that. Or at least ruin that. But I\u2019m hopeful that Popkins will help him find his way back to the swing that made him valuable. I also think Popkins says that to build up S\u00e1nchez\u2019s ego a bit. Sports physiology is a big thing.<\/p>\n
The best thing about S\u00e1nchez is that he hits the ball hard, 93rd percentile in bat speed, 79th percentile in Average Exit Speed last year. The year before (when he was just with the Marlins) he was 95th percentile in Bat Speed, 93rd in Exit Velocity and 95th in Hard Hit %. He was 46th percentile in strikeout rate and 51st in walk rate.<\/p>\n
Ideally, he is a low average\/high power hitter (though he hasn\u2019t cracked the 20 home run barrier yet). Career, his batting average is .239. I\u2019m hoping he\u2019ll do better than that this year. It would be nice if he had more than 20 home runs.<\/p>\n
Defensively? He\u2019s ok. Outs Above Average had him at a +1 in right field. Savant has him a 41st percentile in range and 80th percentile in Arm Strength.<\/p>\n
He steals some bases too. 13 last year, caught 3 times.<\/p>\n
Steamer has S\u00e1nchez playing in 88 games, hitting .248\/.317\/.427 with 13 home runs. Seems somewhat pessimistic to me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what to expect, but I think he\u2019ll be playing against right-handers everyday (presuming no injury issues). I\u2019d like to think the batting coaches can unlock his power and he hits a few more than 13 home runs.<\/p>\n
I think there are lots of reasons to be optimistic. He was a little unlucky last year. His strikeout rate improved a lot last year. I\u2019m taking Popkins at his word that Popkins can improve his swing from last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez is a 28-year-old, left-handed hitting, outfielder. The Jays traded Joey Loperfido to the Astros to pick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,38962,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-596552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays-opinions","15":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}