Year-In-Review: Sixto Sanchez

The 2020 season presented numerous challenges and is one that most teams, Dodgers aside, are ready to move on from. In the case of the Miami Marlins, it represented a major step forward for a perennially-rebuilding franchise.

The Marlins made the playoffs for the first time since their 2003 championship season, mostly on the strength of timely hitting and a strong starting pitching staff. By year's end, that rotation didn't include a single pitcher over the age of 25. The youngest of the bunch was rookie Sixto Sanchez, the team's top prospect after being acquired for All-Star catcher J.T. Realmuto in the offseason.

At age 21, Sanchez looked like a veteran from the jump, allowing just six runs in his first 32 innings pitched with a 29-5 K-BB rate. His last two starts were drastically different, however, as he was tagged for 12 hits and nine runs in seven innings. Did he hit the rookie wall after a month of play or did hitters begin to figure him out?

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Starting Strong

Our initial impression of Sanchez showcased all the positives in his scouting report - a blazing four-seam fastball that averaged 98.5 MPH, ranking in the 97th percentile, a strong changeup to complement it, and most importantly, he stayed healthy.

His rolling xwOBA stayed below the MLB average of .311 nearly through the first 150 batters faced and his ERA didn't go over 3.00 until his final start of the season.

Control wasn't a concern, as he never saw his walk rate touch 8% throughout the minors. The lack of strikeouts is still holding him back from unlocking his full potential but wasn't necessarily an issue in his debut.

The Downside

Despite his elite velocity, Sanchez only ranked in the 34th percentile for K%. He rang up 14 batters in his first two starts spanning 12 innings but began tapering off. The decrease in strikeouts is tied to the same issue that may have caused him to falter down the stretch.

The K-rate on Sanchez's four-seam fastball came in at 30.8%. When filtered for starting pitchers with at least 25 batters faced in 2020, that ranks 19th-highest. For what it's worth, fellow fish Sandy Alcantara, Pablo Lopez, and Trevor Rogers came in at 31.4%, 32.2%, and 35% respectively in that category. This hasn't been officially verified, but that probably makes them the hardest-throwing staff in the majors.

Obligatory Pitching Ninja footage:

Sixto Sanchez, 100mph ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/pBCrRKZabf

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 8, 2020

If the strikeout rate for his blazing fastball was superb, it was even better for his changeup at 31.6%. But while two of his most-used pitches were devastatingly effective, the other sticks out like a blister.

The pitch that hitters took advantage of in his rough late-September starts was his sinker. It is puzzling why this pitch wasn't more effective, seeing as how it generated plenty of vertical movement and clocked in at 96.6 MPH on average. It wasn't a putaway pitch but it did generate plenty of ground balls at a 71.4% rate. It only generated a 14.9% whiff per swing rate, however, according to Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard.

If the problem wasn't velocity or movement, then it must be a real estate mantra: location, location, location. Sanchez's placed his sinker in the same zones consistently and did so regardless of batter handedness. Here are the heatmaps to prove it:

It's clear that his sinker landed in the zone too often and didn't distinguish itself from the four-seamer enough. If the goal with that pitch is simply to produce grounders while reserving the changeup or heater as a wipeout pitch, it worked to that end. Unfortunately, those grounders didn't result in outs often enough and limited his ability to utilize his other weapons since he used the sinker earlier in counts. Pointing to batted-ball luck may seem like a copout but the .400 BABIP on his sinker is far higher than the .258 xBA on the pitch, so maybe positive regression is in store.

Overall, a 27.3% CSW% isn't ace material, but it's on par with other young studs like Dustin May (27.1%) and Kris Bubic (27.3%). Sanchez already has demonstrated that he won't walk his way out of games, nor was the long ball a problem as his 9.4% HR/FB rate can attest to. There's plenty to like here so even if he doesn't cut down on his sinker usage or get the pitch to fully work for him, he should at least sustain last year's results. Minimal growth already puts him in the range of a fantasy SP3. Sanchez's 129 ERA+ was higher than Lucas Giolito or Walker Buehler and he has the benefit of a pitcher's park behind him; the floor for him ratio-wise is well worth the draft risk even if a bump in K-rate is not expected.

2021 Projection

Early Steamer projections are not bullish on Sanchez relative to last season's performance. It predicts his ERA to climb half a run, up to 3.95 along with a 1.30 WHIP. It also predicts no movement in his K% whatsoever. It will be interesting to see what the final ATC projections come out to be but it is easy to buy into a strikeout increase, if not a full-out spike.

When forecasting his ratios, it depends if you put more stock into the way he began the season or ended it. Although getting hit hard in the final pair of regular-season starts and exiting early in the last postseason start may be alarming, it should be noted that two of those games came against the Braves. Of course, he will face his division rivals quite a bit over the next year but their strong end to 2020 may have made Sanchez look worse than he is.

A cursory glance at the debut season for Sixto Sanchez may show a flamethrowing prospect who dazzled upon arrival but was eventually figured out, leading to pessimism about his true Major League readiness. A deeper look reveals a young starter who has all the tools at his disposal to be a true ace and avoided the erratic control that plagues many young starters. By contrast, Casey Mize, the No. 8 prospect in all of baseball heading into 2021, pitched to a 7.27 xERA thanks in part to a 9.8% walk rate.

His early 2021 ADP in NFBC drafts is 114 overall, just behind pitchers such as Zack Greinke and Dylan Budy. Sanchez can't be considered a bargain but the reward could be great if he delivers high-end SP2 value at an SP3 cost.

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