Scout and execs discuss Gary Sanchez ahead of 2021 season: 'Some players are just lightning rods'

Gary Sánchez was once one of baseball’s brightest young stars, a catcher with a nuclear bat and a rocket arm. But defensive lapses, a few poor seasons and injuries have made him into this:

Another ballplayer trying to win his job back.

As the Yankees start spring training this week, what’s, ahem, Kraken with Sánchez is one of the club’s biggest storylines. It’ll loom as large over camp as the inherent risk of tucking Corey Kluber and Jameson Taillon into the rotation behind Gerrit Cole or the health of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.

The Yanks are starting fresh with Sánchez this year, after a season that GM Brian Cashman called “horrible” on both offense and defense. After considering trading or non-tendering Sánchez over the winter, the Yankees gave him a $6.35 million deal instead, avoiding arbitration.

So what are the chances Sánchez soars again after cratering in a COVID-shortened 2020 season? He’s at his lowest point after slashing .147/.253/.365 with 10 homers and a career-worst 36 percent strikeout rate in 49 games. He played so poorly he started only two of the Yankees’ seven postseason games.

SNY talked to two executives and a scout from competing teams about Sánchez’s prospects for 2021. Like the Yankees, all three would not give up on Sánchez.

Would every Yankee fan agree? Hardly, since Sánchez is a hot-button topic for every recliner GM. “Some players are just lightning rods,” says an AL executive.

But Sánchez’s bat holds too much potential thunder to jettison him, the competing officials say, though his defense remains something the Yankees will have to find a way to fix.

“I see him as a run-producing bat who’s always a threat, every pitch,” says a National League executive who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity. “Over 162 games there’s enough game action to disguise his inadequacies behind the plate.

“But in the postseason, both he and (those inadequacies) get exposed in a real negative way. I’ve seen it three years in a row. You can’t hide it in the postseason.”

Adds an MLB scout: “I believe he’ll have a bounceback year, offensively, especially if they don’t put that extreme pressure on his defensive limitations. They’re probably afraid to give up on him until they see how 2021 progresses, which is smart.”

Asked if Sánchez can handle the gig defensively, the scout replies, “Good question to ponder, because the Yankees can’t even figure that one out or they’d be able to help him fix it.

“There aren’t many guys that have his arm, but stolen bases look to be a thing of the past with analytics. The bad part is that the analytics don’t care too much about throwing, but handing the staff, framing and receiving are golden for anyone right now.”

To that end, the Yankees have Sánchez catching with one knee down to improve his framing ability. But his defensive stats, including his Statcast framing numbers, have sagged. Last year, Sanchez led the AL in passed balls again, the third time in four years.

While the NL exec lauded the Yankees for attempting to change Sánchez’s catching stance, he wonders if it will work. “Not everyone has that soft rhythm,” the executive says. “Sánchez has hard hands. I like the fact they were trying to do it. It’s the thing in the game.

“But you can’t be a snatcher, a guy who has hands less than soft, and he’s somewhat of both of those.”

Maybe, the exec mused, the Yanks should let Sánchez be “a stationary receiver and catch the stuff that comes over the plate.”

It’s been a difficult recent run for Sánchez. It was clear last year that Cole preferred pitching to Kyle Higashioka, so Sánchez no longer got the plum assignment of catching one of baseball’s best pitchers, even though Cole and the Yankees had lauded Sánchez early on. Then Higashioka started five of the seven playoff games.

Over the winter, Hall of Fame catcher Pudge Rodríguez, who has a relationship with Sánchez, said in a WFAN interview that it didn’t look like Sánchez was enjoying baseball.

In an ESPN interview, Sánchez said that he was never told why he was mostly benched in October, but that he and the Yanks had cleared the air. Cashman’s response, in part, was that he was “not sure an explanation was necessary,” since poor performance caused Sánchez to lose his job during the most crucial time of the season.

In the aftermath of such a difficult year, Sánchez played in the Dominican Winter League for the first time since 2013-14. In 15 games, he slashed .245/.355/.434 with two homers and 19 strikeouts in 62 plate appearances for Toros del Este. He’s honed his swing with hitting coach Marcus Thames and worked on his catcher with Yanks’ catching coach Tanner Swanson this off-season, too.

“He obviously cares about his career, his future,” says the AL executive. “It takes a lot of dedication for a guy, where he is in the game, to go play winter ball and he did.”

That effort, in part, is why the AL executive believes there’s still a chance Sánchez returns to being “one of the better catchers in the game again,” as he puts it.

Sánchez has certainly been there before. He’s got two 30-plus homer seasons on his ledger, including a career-best 34 in 2019. He’s a two-time All-Star. He’s only 28.

If the Yankees don’t want Sánchez, other teams will, the AL executive says. There is a dearth of quality catching across MLB. “The demand is so much greater than the supply,” the exec says. “Look around at how many guys are catching at 36.

“The Yankees are in a really good spot with Higashioka and Sánchez.”