I still remember the first time I saw a picture of Pablo Sandoval. After an undistinguished performance in Rookie League as a 17 year old catcher, Pablo had hit .330 against older competition as an 18 year old in the Short Season Northwest League where he had been moved to 3B to help develop his bat. Needless to say, a prospect watcher like me was eager to find out more about this kid. Then, Baseball America came out with their League Top 10 Prospects and Pablo made the list for the NWL. BA had a picture with the write up. OMG! What a shock! I was stunned! His listed dimensions were 5'11", 180 lbs. Maybe just a tad small for a catcher, but OK for a third baseman. What was clear from the picture was that Pablo was no 180 lbs! Maybe 280, but defintely not 180! After a lot of discussion on the internet the consensus estimate was that Pablo weighed somewhere between 220 lbs and 240 lbs, but I still tend to believe he was closer to 260.
Our worst fears seemed to be confirmed the following season when Pablo struggled to a .631 OPS while being moved to first base. At this point, a lot of prospect watchers were ready to write him off. I saved a spot near the bottom of my Top 50 prospects list because the Giants still seemed to be working with him.
I saw Pablo in person for the first time the following season in San Jose. I saw a couple of games that season and Pablo played catcher in one and first base in the other. He was still huge, but surprisingly agile. His hitting was still not that impressive, but significantly better with an OPS of .476. Around this time, there was a lot of discussion about Pablo's alarmingly low walk rates. Late in the season I witnessed Pablo hit one of the longest HR's I have ever seen off James McDonald, the Dodger's prospect. It hit high up on the netting behind the right-centerfield wall that keeps HR balls from going out onto E Street in San Bernardino. I left that game thinking Pablo might have a lot more power potential than it had appeared up to that point.
Pablo returned to San Jose to start the 2008 season at age 21 and went on a tear with a slash line of .359/.412/.597 with 12 HR in just 68 games. He continued raking after a promotion to AA Connecticut, .337/.364/.549 with 8 more HR's in 44 games. He kept right on going after a promotion to San Francisco, .345/.357/.490. Giants fans were not just impressed by his numbers but also by his enthusiasm which was contagious and seemed to wake up a moribund Giants team. Pablo was still a very large man, but concerns about his weight faded into the background as his athleticism continued to show through.
2009 was the stuff of baseball legend for Pablo. Swinging at practically everything thrown at him, he also squared up practically everything and tore up opposing pitching with a line of .330/.387/.556 wtih 25 HR's. Somehow he still managed to draw 52 BB's and concerns about his plate discipline faded some more. Maybe he was just that rare player, like Vlad Guerrero, who simply could hit everything he could reach with his bat, and hit it hard. His weight, although still alarmingly high became more of a novelty. Barry Zito thought he looked like Kung Fu Panda running the bases and the nickname stuck. A booming business in Panda gear raked in hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for the Giants merchandising department.
While few observers believed that Pablo would repeat his 2009 numbers in 2010, it was widely assumed that he would hit close to .300 with power. The only question seemed to be what position he would play as he had played C, 3B, and 1B up to that point. An offseason conditioning and nutrition program called Camp Panda was widely publicized, but when Pablo showed up to spring training, if anything, he looked even bigger than in 2009. With the acquisition of Aubrey Huff, the re-signing of Bengie Molina and with Buster Posey knocking on the door, Pablo settled in at 3B.
Pablo had his moments in 2010, but he also had agonizingly long stretches where he looked absolutely lost at the plate. Pitchers started routinely throwing him high fastballs, often up around his eyes, that he could neither lay off nor hit. Clearly frustrated and pressing, he expanded his strike zone even further. When he did make contact, it was weak contact with countless pop ups for outs and even worse, seemingly countless GIDP's. He appeared to be gaining even more weight, right before our eyes! Word got out of personal problems. Maybe too much partying had cost him his marriage and a divorce was in progress. At one point, Pablo had to take several days off to fly to his native Venezuela to sign divorce and custody papers, which couldn't have been a pleasant experience in any way. A temporarily improved approach at the plate disintegrated again.
With his weight appearing to balloon, his fielding at 3B, which had actually been pretty good, started to deteriorate. By the end of the World Series, he had become a liability both at the plate and fielding his position and he as benched in favor of Mike Fontenot and later Juan Uribe with Edgar Renteria taking over at SS. The rest is history!
After the World Series celebration died down, Brian Sabean went public with his concerns about Pablo revealing that Manager Bruce Bochy had told him he would be sent down to the minors if he did not get himself into better shape in the offseason. Pablo would participate in a diet and fitness program near San Diego in the offseason. So, what can we expect from Pablo Sandoval next season?
Despite his unusual size and shape, Pablo is an exceptionally gifted athlete with seemingly limitless potential. With that in mind, one certainly would not want to sell him short. He went through a similar struggle, at least at the plate, back in Augusta in the minors at age 19 and worked his way out of it, although it took a couple of seasons. As a very young man, he had the insight and determination to realize any future in baseball, at the positions he was likely to be able to play, would require him to throw right-handed. Pablo, a natural lefthander, taught himself to throw righthanded. How many kids do something like that, and all on their own? So Pablo has some definite strengths going for him.
My concern for Pablo is that his weight will become more and more of an issue as he gets older. He appears to have a familial and lifelong tendency to be overweight. He was already grossly overweight as a teenager. Whether due to metabolic syndrome, leptin deficiency, or simply overeating, the natural history of teenage obesity is even further weight gain in the 3'rd and 4'th decades of life. A weight loss program lasting a few weeks is not going to make a dent in Pablo's weight long term. As with the ill-fated Camp Panda, he will gain the weight back, and more, within a very short time. To control his weight, Pablo Sandoval will need to make changes in his diet and lifestyle that he lives every day for the rest of his life, or at least his career. It is not impossible. People do it all the time. The vast majority, however, are not able to overcome whatever is driving them to be overweight. You never want to give up on a talent like Pablo Sandoval, but I have to say I am not holding out any expectations of a significantly slimmed down Panda come spring training.
Sandoval is still pre-arbitration, so it costs the Giants essentially nothing to see if he can get back to his Panda days, although hopefully not his Panda shape! He is certainly not someone the Giants would want to invest a long term contract in at this point, but for the league minimum salary, you have to find out what he can do. The Giants will just have to make sure they have a backup plan in place.
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Concerns about Pablo are well-founded but a bit overblown. He's going to be making around league minimum and then be very cheap for 2012 -- the earliest we need to start worrying about him is in two years.
ReplyDeleteLast year was a serious step backward, but hardly a disaster. He was slightly below average with the bat (wOBA of .314 and wRC+ of 95) and right around average defensively (UZR/150 of +1.5 at 3B). Fangraphs puts him at 1.9 WAR for the season. That's almost $8 million worth of free agent production. And, given Pablo's talent, I personally find it hard to imagine his production declining much further than it did in 2010 (unless it's for medical reasons or due to his weight balooning to 300+ lbs.)
I understand the concerns and the frustration with Pablo. But treating him like he's a liability to the team is a joke. He's a young, extremely talented player who has to get in better shape and take the game more seriously. My money is on him succeeding. Certainly while we're paying him next to nothing, he'll be a player very much worth having on the team.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteI get all that, but do you think the Giants would have won the World Series if Pablo had stayed in the lineup through to the end? Yes, his overall numbers looked OK, but most of that production was contained in some relatively short hot streaks. There were long stretches where he was almost an automatic out, or even two outs at the plate. This is another case where watching him play every day may be a more accurate assessment than looking at his stats.
I do agree that you can't afford to pass up free talent and his ceiling is still sky high. I just don't think it's a given that he is going to bounce right back, and unless he gets his weight and plate discipline issues under control he could have a short career.
To be more specific, Pablo hit a combined .333 with 9 of his 13 HR's in the months of April and August. He hit .220 with just 4 HR's in the other 4 months of the season combined. His worst month, by far, was September when he hit just .207.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that Pablo, even how he hits and fields now, is capable of playing 3B on a poor team in the MLB. However, this team is not a cellar dweller, but the ML Champion of 2010. There are expectations to live up to and fielding a bit below average 3B won't cut it. He is quickly beginning to look like Mo Vaughn and hit like Cody Ransom. I hope it works out for the kid, but he needs to get his act together.
ReplyDeleteAgain, too early to write him off, but yes, he has a lot of work to do.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, MLBTR is reporting that the Giants will not make a posting bid on the Japanese shortstop Nishioka.
ReplyDeleteI am also concerned about Pablo's eyesight. Last year he keep rotating between goggles, contacts, and natural. He complained of blurring vision after the 2009 season and I just am not convinced that the problem was ever really resolved.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that he seemed to be unable to recognize quickly enough if a pitch was a fastball or an off speed pitch lead to being late on fastballs and early on off speed pitches. The result of this was that he struck out a lot on fastballs (especially high ones) and hit weakly a lot on off speed pitches with both pop ups and weakly hit double play ground balls.
To me this concern is both more immediate and more important then his weight problems.
GRM,
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting take and something we will have to keep an eye on.
(Pun intended, LOL!)
Seriously though, that certainly could be part of the problem.
I thought I had commented here, but I guess it was elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI think Pablo will be back. Dave made a lot of good points that I agree with. GRM, he hit all of 2009 with his blurred vision, so if anything, the goggles/glasses are the things bothering him and he should get rid of them. I think he should go with what he's comfortable with and stop fiddling, even if it means using nothing.
Pablo's bad spells can be mapped out to be closely tied to dark personal events in 2010: divorce papers/child custody battle, flying to Venezuela to sign the divorce papers, and his mother nearly dying in the San Bruno pipeline explosion/inferno. Once he got over them, he started hitting again and well.
Given that his hitting was affected most of the season, it is my belief that his defense was affected too. MLB baseball is hard enough when you are focused on the job, let alone dealing with personal tragedies that takes away your focus.
The descriptions I've seen about his fielding leads me to think that the pressure led him to start concentrating too much on his mechanics, and when that happens, you stop using muscle memory to do your actions, your brain reverts back to doing everything step by step, like when you were first beginning, making you look awkward, making you throw the ball over the head of fielders or on the ground.
I think he needs an off-season to get all the bad thoughts out of his head, and all the extra calories out of his belly. Once his mind is clear, his hitting and fielding will return.
And he does not need to get thin, just thinner. I'm betting he got depressed this season and many people who do that eat a lot of food and get fat.
People need to get over it, he will always be fat, that is his body type. He was still a great player the size he was at in 2009. And there are great players like Tony Gwynn who had a long career and was never svelte.
He just needs to get back to where he was before then down some from there, so that he's leaner. He'll always be a big boy.
OGC,
ReplyDeleteHope you have this one right. Even a partial return to Panda form from Pablo would be a huge boost to this team.
OGC, Panda never complained about vision problems during the 2009 season. You are just wrong here. The problem did not raise it's head until the off season.
ReplyDeleteI stand by my comments above.
I also stand by my comments. I don't know how many times I've seen a player don't complain all season (or all career) then suddenly they finally figure it out and treat him. Eyre with his ADHD. Others I recall had the same as Pablo, needed glasses all season long but it just didn't occur to them that they needed them (or maybe even perhaps they were trying to be macho about it).
ReplyDeleteBesides, from what I recall right when this was announced, it was noted that Pablo was not seeing the ball in 2009 and hence I commented "imagine what he would have hit if he was able to see the pitches!"
I'll see if I can dig up those articles.
OK, I found an article that I had read and was part of all that I digested to come to my conclusion that Sandoval was blurryl-eyed in 2009.
ReplyDeletehttp://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100226&content_id=8192784&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
Good enough for you GRM?
OGC,
ReplyDeleteThe article really doesn't address when Pablo first started noticing he was having vision problems. It does make comparisons between MLB 2009 and the Venezuela Winter League. But, these are the authors comparisons not Panda's.
My view is that something happened at some point that negatively impacted his vision. It seems to me that the most likely point for this to have happened is shortly before he first started complaining about it. It is my understanding that his first complaints were during Camp Panda in November last year. It is my view that thus far the cures have not worked.
I freely admit that I could be wrong. But, I have seen nothing yet (including your linked article) that convinces me that I am.