It’s time to talk about Gary Sanchez. It’s time to have that conversation.
At the time I’m writing this, Gary Sanchez has a .086 batting average. For the casual sports fan, that low of an average for a baseball isn’t good. It’s bad, it’s extremely bad.
For perspective, if that was your average on your job performance, you’d look over your back for Human Resources tapping your shoulder and asking you to stop by their office after lunch.
When Sanchez is hot, he’s fun to watch. He’s just as fun to watch as Aaron Judge. But right now, his bat is ice cold. And it’s his bat, not his glove, that’s keeping him in the starting lineup.
Sanchez’s nickname “Kraken” was bestowed upon him by Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. As noted by Yankees beat writer Bryan Hoch, Cashman pulled from the 2006 movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” in which Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow character encounters a colossal octopus.
“For some reason, it came to me that Gary Sanchez was a mystical beast, that his bat could unleash fury on his opponents,” Cashman said. “The one thing that we always talked about when we saw him coming through the system was that the ball off his bat sounds different. The crack of the bat, the Kraken being a mystical beast, it all fit.”
When Sanchez is on one of his hot steaks, that sound isn’t just different, it’s frequent. But throughout his time with the Yankees, he’s been prone to extended hitting slumps. This year, in a truncated season, and now with Giancarlo Stanton injured again, the struggles of Sanchez will be emphasized.
Five million dollars. That’s what the Yankees agreed to pay Sanchez this year. A one-year deal that’s significantly more than the $700,000 he made last year. In this 60-game season, however, MLB players are earning 37 percent of their full season salary. Sanchez, per Spotrac, has an adjusted 2020 salary of $1,851,852. That’s still a decent bump up compared to last year.
Sanchez has two more years of arbitration before he can become an unrestricted free agent. Cashman and the Yankees value Sanchez enough to raise his pay this year. They didn’t do it for his defense, they know what they have in his bat. He needs to meet them halfway now and start producing.
In a short season, like this one, the Yankees can work around his issues. But, big picture, they have a tough decision to make. Because we’re all still waiting for Gary Sanchez to release the “Kraken”.
