Bruce Bochy
Freddy Sanchez has had a long, rocky rehab, full of setbacks and revised timetables, and hasn’t had a big-league at-bat since dislocating his shoulder more than 10 months ago. But the Giants aren’t giving up on the second baseman.
He’s too good of a clutch hitter, which sets him apart from other Giants.
Clutch hitting is what managers love and sabermetricians mock. Some professors of advanced statistics believe clutch hitting is overrated, if not nonexistent, that good hitters tend to hit in most any situation and that if someone hits a game-ending home run, as compared with a solo home run near the end of a onesided game, it’s more random than skill-based.
To which a manager will say poppycock.
knows Sanchez has a track record of hitting with runners in scoring position, the most basic stat when measuring clutch hitting. In fact, no one on the Giants is close. Among current big-leaguers — and we call Sanchez current even though he’s injured — he has the 11thbest career average with runners in scoring position, .316.
In fact, dating to 1974, when hitting with RISP became an acknowledged stat, Sanchez is 24th — 600-plate-appearance minimum — ahead of Vladimir Guerrero, Don Mattingly, Roberto Alomar, Mo Vaughn, Mark Grace, Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds.
Considering that Giants hitters statistically turn less effective at the plate when teammates are positioned at second and/or third base, as they did throughout 2011, Sanchez’s bat would be welcomed, so long as it’s just as productive.
“I’ve always liked pressure situations,” Sanchez said. “You bear down a little more to get those guys in, put the ball in play a little more. You’re not always going to get it done, but you go up with the best approach.”
Through Friday, the Giants were hitting .196 with runners in scoring position, ranking 29th in the majors. Granted, it’s a small sample size, but this team ranked last in the majors last year at .219. It’s where the A’s rank this year, at .191 through Friday, a sign that something is in the misty Bay Area air that deters hitters on the home team from getting hits with a couple of ducks on the pond.
Sanchez is a little different. Before he got hurt last year, he was hitting a team-high .292 with two outs and runners in scoring position, while the rest of the team was at .168. Overall, the team was at .173, lowest in the majors since the ’74 “invention” of the RISP stat.
The list of current players on the career top 10 RISP chart, which Sanchez missed by one, reads like this: Joey Votto, Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Ichiro Suzuki, Todd Helton, Michael Young, Kevin Youkilis, Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez and Victor Martinez. Good company. Pablo Sandoval is on track to having strong career RISP numbers, his lifetime average being .275, which is that low because of his awful 2010 (.208 with RISP). He’s at .318 this year, but his record hit streak to open the season suggests he’s solid in most every category, and he is.
On the flip side, Angel Pagan was hitting .118 with RISP, Aubrey Huff .154, Emmanuel Burriss Brandon Belt .200, Brandon Crawford .211, Melky Cabrera .217 and Buster Posey .235.
The A’s? Yoenis Céspedes is fine at .316, but most numbers aren’t pretty: Jemile Weeks .077, Seth Smith .083, Josh Reddick .111 and Kurt Suzuki .176. Weeks showed as a rookie last year that he could hit in the so-called clutch, posting a .395 average in 97 games with RISP.
But over time, nobody on either team has done it like Sanchez. The problem is, it does the Giants no good if he continues to stay clear of bigleague batter’s boxes.