The San Francisco Giants Jonathan Sanchez had a year of great improvement in 2009, which featured a no-hitter and an amazing second half of the season.
His electric stuff led to a lot of strikeouts, but also a fair amount of walks. He struck out 177 batters in 163.1 innings pitched (for a K/9 of 9.75), which is seventh best among Major League Baseball starting pitchers with a minimum of 100 IP.
His walks per nine rose from 4.28 to 4.85 but his WHIP took a nice dive from 1.45 to 1.37. His season ERA followed suit with a dip from 5.01 to 4.24. These stats don’t tell the whole story though. In the second half, Sanchez ventured in ace territory.
Check out his stats after June 22nd:
6-4 W-L, 96.6 IP, 3.35 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 113 K’s (10.5 K/9)
He made dramatic improvements in total batters faced per inning, batting average against, walks plus hits per inning pitched, and percentage of strikes thrown. When Sanchez threw more strikes, he was a great deal more valuable as evidenced by the solid relationship between strikes thrown and win probability added (WPA).
The next stats show average innings pitched sorted by record:
4.944 average IP in 12 Losses
5.578 average IP in 9 No Decisions
6.167 average IP in 8 Wins
Sanchez is very good at making hitters miss the ball. For the 2009 season, his batting average against was a phenomenal .221. His strike-zone whiff percentage of 18.5% puts him fourth among 130 pitchers with over 100 IP (the league average for 2009 was about 11.0%).
Batters are having a harder time making quality contact on his pitches. Some of his line drives have turned into fly balls as he’s added vertical movement on his fastball, especially towards the rear portion of last season.
Here is a season-by-season progression:
Year: LD %, BABIP, FB %
2008: 21.4, .327, 37.5
2009: 16.2, .290, 43.1
Sanchez’s 10.3 percent home run per fly ball rate is about league average and if he can develop his curve ball, that number may be reduced in 2010.
In 2009, Sanchez threw his slider three times more than in ’08 (6.0 percent up to 18.3 percent) and it discombobulated opponents for an amazing 1.96 runs per 100 pitches according to the fan Graphs website.
After being moved to the bullpen on June 28th for two outings and working on his slider with Giants’ Pitching Coach Dave Righetti, his first start back in the rotation culminated in the July 10th no-hitter against the San Diego Padres which featured a tremendous 11 strikeouts and zero walks.
Upon his return to SP, he threw his slider from 20-30 percent of the time for the rest of the season. Along with the extra slider usage came more polish on its sink.
Now that he’s added an awesome slider to combine with his lighting fastball, Sanchez has an incredible one-two punch going into the 2010 season with possibilities of improving a third pitch.
Don’t be surprised if he posts numbers similar or better to those in the second half of 2009. I will estimate an increase in total innings pitched bearing in mind his improved inning efficiency.
2010 Prediction: 14-8, 170 IP, 193 Ks, 74 Walks, 1.18 WHIP, 3.44 ERA
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