Not a Rookie: Pablo Sandoval

by John Sickels on Apr 9, 2025 4:00 PM EDT Comment 24 comments

Pablo Sandoval was signed by the Giants out of Venezuela in 2002. He made his North American debut in 2004, hitting .266/.287/.373 for the Arizona Rookie League Giants. His bat was rated as questionable, but scouts praised his defensive skills, highly ironic considering what was to come. Despite the weak bat, the scouting reports on his defense were strong enough that I put him in the 2005 book, rated as a Grade C. I noted his very low walk rate (five in 177 at-bats), but also pointed out that he fanned just 17 times.

Sandoval moved up to the Northwest League in 2005, hitting .330/.383/.425. He took a big step forward with the bat, continuing to show a strong knack for contact, but improving his strike zone judgment and showing more power. Despite the good defensive reports in '04, the Giants moved him to third base in '05. His arm strength and hands were rated positively, but scouts wondered about his range. They also panned his 5-10, 220 pound body. I gave him a Grade B-, writing that I wanted to see how his power developed, but that the bat looked good.

Such was not the case in 2006: Sandoval hit just .265/.309/.322 in 117 games for Class A Augusta, with just one homer. He hit into 18 double plays, showed no power, and didn't control the strike zone particularly well. He also split the season between first base and third base; a corner hitter with a .631 OPS in A-ball and a 5-10, 220 pound body doesn't show up on many prospect lists. I left him out of the '07 book, and Baseball America didn't list him among the Giants Top 30 prospects.

Moved up to San Jose in the Cal League in '07, Sandoval hit .287/.312/.476 with 11 homers, certainly much better production. His walk rate remained very low, with just 16 walks, but he kept his strikeouts under control and showed more power. He also moved back behind the plate, splitting his playing time between catcher and first base. Baseball America still didn't rank him in their Top 30 Giants list, but I put him in the '08 book, rated as a Grade C. I wrote that I was intrigued with his bat and felt he had some upside, but that I had no idea where he would fit defensively.

As you know, Sandoval had a remarkable '08 season, hitting .359/.412/.597 in 68 games for San Jose, then .337/.364/.549 in 44 games for Double-A Connecticut, followed by a .345/.357/.490 mark in 41 games for the Giants, just edging past the rookie eligibility limit. The defense issue is still kind of strange; he'll likely end up fantasy-qualifying at third base, first base, and catcher this year. Is the bat for real? Although I don't think he's going to hit .345 over a full season, yes I think his bat is legitimate. He will never be a walk machine, but he seems like a .real 280-.300 hitter to me. He's one of those players who makes "hard contact" even on pitches most hitters shouldn't swing at. Such hitters can win batting titles when things go well, and Sandoval does have that kind of potential. He really snuck up on both statheads and scouts last year.

PECOTA comps are all over the map and show how odd of a player Sandoval is: Arquimidez Pozo, Benito Santiago, Ruben Sierra, Leo Hernandez, Pedro Munoz, Jose Desa, Jose Guillen, Ron Jones, Ivan Rodriguez, Victor Diaz, Darryl Motley, Rafael Palmeiro, Carlos Baerga, and Richard Hidalgo all show up. Talk about a huge range of possible outcomes.

For 2009, projections

PECOTA    .289/.329/.455
Shandler:     .294/.319/.482
James:         .320/.346/.500
ZIPS           .284/.313/.455
CHONE       .283/.315/.426

All seem like possible outcomes, with James the optimistic outlier.

Some questions to consider that I don't know the answer to.

**How much home run power will he eventually show?
**Is he going to age along normal curve? At age 22 he should have plenty of growth potential, but given his body type, perhaps he is at his peak now.
**Where would YOU put him defensively? As he gets older, will he lose the mobility for third base and/or catcher, ending up confined to DH/1B?

I am putting Sandoval on my Crystal Ball list and will have that for you soon.

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Thanks

You forgot to mention his ebullient personality. If he does become a quality hitter, he’ll be one of the most beloved Giants to come along in a long time. We’ve already got quite a few nicknames for him: Kung Fu Panda, Pandoval, Fat Ichiro, etc.

"The BB's are out. The BB's are being arseholes to me." - Brian Wilson.

by hairball on Apr 9, 2025 5:03 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

When I saw him in Binghamton, I likened him to a short Frank Thomas

by Bravesin07 on Apr 9, 2025 8:21 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

If only he had the same walk rate.

by DesertFox on Apr 9, 2025 8:53 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Its not just that he doesn't walk

He doesn’t take pitches. From the one Giants ST game I watched him in and the game they showed tonight on MLB Network, I kept track of how many pitches I saw him take in the 5 or 6 PAs I was watching: 1. He just swings at EVERYTHING. The one pitch I saw him take was a breaking ball that would have bounced on the plate….if it was over it. He struck out on the next pitch, another curve in the dirt.

I do think Sandoval has some upside, but its going to be tough to be a legit big league threat with that approach. I have seen him put good swings on pitches outside the zone, but he’s going to have a lot of trouble on curves and splits in the dirt.

by Mark Himmelstein on Apr 9, 2025 11:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Vladdy

He’s a hell of a lot like Vlad, the kind of guy who can actually rack up a fair number of pitches per AB while still swinging at EVERYTHING simply by fouling off so many pitches and having the ability to hit anything near the zone, thus forcing pitchers to expand the zone into something ridiculous to keep him from making hard contact. The guys who can do it are rare, but there are the occasional hitters who can get by without walking. Remember, Garret Anderson has put together a really good career hitting for less average than Sandoval looks to with his career high being 38 walks, with his average more like 30.

by Fanon on Apr 10, 2025 12:59 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah

I’m not saying he can’t be good, he could be, but he is going to have to take a few more pitches. I’m not even saying he needs to draw a ton of walks, just not swing first pitch every time (or second, third, or fourth pitch, etc.). Even guys like Vlad and Anderson generally don’t swing at every pitch they see. I’d liken it more to Jeff Francoeur when he first broke in, except even more extreme.

by Mark Himmelstein on Apr 10, 2025 2:27 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Good comp

Giants hitting coach Carny Lansford spoke recently about Sandoval and said Vlad is the only other major leaguer he has seen who is a bad ball hitter like Sandoval. That is, being able to square up balls that are out of the zone for most hitters, which pitchers like to pitch to for strikes, and still make good, hard contact. His attitude, for most of the Giants hitters is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Probably because the hitter is not open to his tinkering until they are ready for advice.

He also noted that Sandoval does not literally swing at everything, so if he is doing it in the game right now, he’s probably pressing and falling into bad habits. He said that Sandoval is no hacker, he has more discipline than that (at least usually).

Sandoval seems like a pretty easy going guy, realizing how lucky he is and enjoying every moment. So I imagine that once he establishes himself as a major league hitter, he probably would be open to working on taking more walks. He spent all winter working on his 3B defense, taking grounders from a Giants coach. And, contrary to popular opinion, the Giants do realize the value of a walk, it is just that players are like horses: you can lead them to water but you can’t make them drink.

It took years before Feliz finally realized, “Oh, if I want a long career, I better learn to take some walks”, which he did his last season with us. Frandsen was told to do that too a couple of years ago, and promptly got a bunch in the AFL, and seems to take the walk when he can, while also keeping his good K%. So I would think that once Sandoval is comfortable in the majors (assuming that happens, of course), they would work more with him on taking more walks.

The flip side on that is if he is able to maintain a high enough batting average to still have a OK or even good OBP even with minimal walks, you want to keep him doing that when you are having him hit in the 5-hole, you want him driving in runs, not walking and hoping the guys in the bottom of the lineup drive him in.

Adoptive parental unit of Ehire Adrianza.
Godfather of Travis Ishikawa.

"I'm really proud to be on this team." - Nate Schierholtz
"Woo hoo" - Tim "The Kid" Lincecum
"Let's go get them in 2009!" - The Kid

by obsessivegiantscompulsive on Apr 13, 2025 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

AHHHH

KUNG FU PANDA WALKED TODAY!!!!! Only 3 games into the season and he has a walk?!?!? haha

join the cause: www.weplaygreen.org

by gore51 on Apr 10, 2025 12:15 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

ya, but it was intentional, but still….he didn’t swing!

I wanted to adopt, but all the good looking babies were taken

by joeytothelimit on Apr 10, 2025 2:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Shhh....

I was planning on keeping it on the down-low.

join the cause: www.weplaygreen.org

by gore51 on Apr 10, 2025 2:39 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Crystal Ball

I know these things are always highly speculative, but might it be more productive to wait until at least mid-season before making any judgment on him? The track record of Sandoval actually producing is so short as to be nonexistent, and I feel like waiting a bit to see if the league catches up with him a couple hundred ABs in might be more instructive. Just my two cents.

by Fanon on Apr 10, 2025 12:56 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

And by “always” speculative I really mean “inherently”.

by Fanon on Apr 10, 2025 1:04 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Exactly

You can get away with being a free swinger, but he seems to be more than that right now, and MLB pitchers are going to take advantage as they catch up with the scouting reports. He is going to go through and adjustment period, and there’s just not enough track record here to really predict exactly how he’s going to handle that. Dude can rake though, he just has to take a few more pitches, so he might actually get strikes thrown to him.

by Mark Himmelstein on Apr 10, 2025 2:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I agree to an extent

With Francoeur as the best example of why. He had a great first partial season, but has been getting generally worse each year after that, though at least he is a superb defensive RF, from what I hear. His OPS has been mostly below MLB average, below 100 OPS+, when I would think most of the average RF is above 100 OPS+, as RF is usually more of an offensive position than others (NL average RF in 2008 was around 111 OPS+, so if I got that right, the average RF has 111 OPS+; he was 72 and hasn’t been above 111 since his first season). His one good offensive trait, his power, has been on a decline, hurt by a concurrent decline in flyballs hit (which obviously affected his HR total).

Still, there is one excellent reason Sandoval is not like Francoeur: he has avoided strikeouts all the way up the minors and into the majors. He has been around 10-15% K%. He is currently swinging more wild, with 5 in 23 AB, so it does appear that what people are saying is true, that he’s going after pitches he should not be. But his history is being able to keep his tornado of a swing in relative control and not swinging at balls that he can’t do something good with. And, after all, this is small samples.

He will, as noted, have to make the adjustment, but he’s been able to do that coming up the minors, so the odds favor him doing it in the majors too. Still, there is always that group that never figures it out, and so it would be highly speculative.

Still, isn’t that what we are relying on scouts for, making speculative judgments on what a player is capable of even before he does much of anything in the majors? And isn’t that one of the tenets of sabermetrics, as Bill James taught, that we can project how a player might do in the majors, based on what he has done in the minors? Particularly upper minors?

Adoptive parental unit of Ehire Adrianza.
Godfather of Travis Ishikawa.

"I'm really proud to be on this team." - Nate Schierholtz
"Woo hoo" - Tim "The Kid" Lincecum
"Let's go get them in 2009!" - The Kid

by obsessivegiantscompulsive on Apr 13, 2025 12:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I was skeptical until he did it in the Eastern League

But yeah, I worry that he swings at everything, while being impressed that he can often put the bat on bad pitches squarely anyway. ’Tain’t just anecdote, but data that say so: viz http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/3/10/786199/graph-of-the-day-plate-dis

Someone who can hit everything and doesn’t K can get away with this, and criminy, he’s 22. The league might catch up to him, but evidence thus far indicates the bat is real, if more anomaly than elite. I worry about his bulk and lack of position most. I don’t think his bat plays enough for 1B, I don’t think he has the range for 3B. Maybe 3B/Posey backup? Who knows.

And yes, lots of fun to watch. Surprisingly fast down the line, too.

by wcw on Apr 10, 2025 1:31 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

And agile on the basepaths

He had two beautiful slides, within a week of each other, scoring a run each time.

First one he dove to the 3B side of homeplate and, as the catcher’s mitt whiffed at tagging him, his outreached hand taps homeplate for the score.

Second one, I was surprised he didn’t hurt himself, but he somehow eluded the tab with an awkward leap and landing on homeplate to score.

It was like watching a bumblebee fly, I can’t imagine a sleek baserunner doing any better on the basepaths than what Sandoval did, and he did it twice in a week.

Adoptive parental unit of Ehire Adrianza.
Godfather of Travis Ishikawa.

"I'm really proud to be on this team." - Nate Schierholtz
"Woo hoo" - Tim "The Kid" Lincecum
"Let's go get them in 2009!" - The Kid

by obsessivegiantscompulsive on Apr 13, 2025 12:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Dimitri Young comp?

anyone.. maybe

by SteveHoffmanSlowey on Apr 10, 2025 4:59 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Yeah...

I think that is what he’s going to be. He’ll be a 1B soon as well.

How bout Cleaver as a nickname?

by Havok1517 on Apr 10, 2025 9:43 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Those nicknames are priceless! How about "Fatimir Guerrero"? Am I trying too hard with that one?

I only recently learned about Sandoval, but he’s so darn intriguing that I’m really excited to see what he does. Are the Giants just the kind of club that are in transition enough that they don’t mind taking this kind of risk? And how much playing time will he get? Will he actually play catcher?

by mattybobo on Apr 10, 2025 11:07 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

He should

To me he could be almost as valuable as Tony Phillips was as a everyday utility guy back in the day (though obviously without Phillips’ great plate discipline…lol). Contrary to what you hear on here he is a GOOD catcher, pretty good 3b, and pretty good at 1b

by casejud on Apr 10, 2025 12:22 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Power

he has legit power and to all fields. He could definitely be a 20-25 (maybe 30) homerun guy, but probably will not be able to put up those type of numbers in AT&T Park.

Bonds stands alone.

Proud adopted parent of future big league slugger Thomas Neal
Official Sponsor of the 1997 San Francisco Giants

by nostocksjustbonds on Apr 10, 2025 12:53 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

positions

He provides the most value as a catcher, but as long as he’s on the Giants, he won’t end up there because of Posey. Also, he’s losing development time at the position while playing over at 3rd. There were already some question marks about his catching, though there seems to be a difference of opinion on that.

He won’t likely stay at 3rd base over the long run as he slows down, though in the short run, he’ll be adequate and the Giants need his bat in the lineup.

That would leave first base as the only long term option with the Giants. Right now, Travis Ishikawa has the position all to himself. He’s a good fielder and has good chance to stay there for awhile if he keeps hitting.

I suppose that means that he’ll end up as a 1b/DH unless he goes somewhere he can catch everyday.

Bonds stands alone.

Proud adopted parent of future big league slugger Thomas Neal
Official Sponsor of the 1997 San Francisco Giants

by nostocksjustbonds on Apr 10, 2025 1:06 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs