Brad Penner-Imagn Photos
Writer’s observe: 5 Issues will return subsequent week. Within the meantime, take pleasure in an article about one in all my favourite gamers.
Do you need to know the way a lot Carlos Santana loves enjoying baseball? From 2020 by way of 2023, he performed for 5 groups, bought traded midseason twice, and compiled a 94 wRC+. He was 37, had earned greater than $100 million in his profession, and didn’t have an apparent on a regular basis beginning job lined up. He might have hung up his spikes proper then – however he took a one-year, $5.5 million cope with the Twins and turned again the clock with a 114 wRC+. Then he signed one other one-year deal, this one for $12 million with the Guardians, and saved the prepare rolling. Via the primary third of the season, he’s on tempo for his greatest 12 months in additional than half a decade.
What’s his secret? As a fellow 39-year-old, I needed to search out out – for, you understand, principally skilled causes, but additionally as a result of typically my knees damage after happening a very brisk stroll. Unhealthy information for me, although. I’ve discovered one factor that Santana has completed in 2025 to rejuvenate himself, and I’m undecided that I can replicate it in my private life.
Let me clarify. In the event you have a look at Santana’s Baseball Savant percentile rankings, you received’t come away impressed:
Sure, we get it, the person has an elite sense of the strike zone, and he’s nonetheless nice at protection — no huge shock — but it surely’s a little bit of a bummer if we glance solely on the bar graphs above Chase%; there’s not a ton of loud contact, not a ton of squared-up contact, and he’s not often hitting the ball on the candy spot. That’s a whole lot of blue for a man operating a 123 wRC+ and getting an article written about his late-career resurgence.
To grasp what’s happening right here, you must look a bit nearer. Santana is a switch-hitter, however lately, he was doing most of his injury whereas batting right-handed. From 2020 to 2024, Santana posted a 124 wRC+ towards left-handed pitchers and an 89 wRC+ towards right-handers. This 12 months, alternatively, he’s teeing off when he will get to bat lefty, to the tune of a juicy 130 wRC+ and all seven of his homers. He hasn’t confronted a ton of lefty opposition and thus hasn’t batted righty fairly often, however he’s solely managed a 99 wRC+ there.
The primary lesson right here is one that you simply inevitably study in baseball: Arbitrary-endpoint splits are risky. What’s so particular about 2020 by way of 2024? What’s so particular concerning the first few months of 2025? Why ought to we count on a loud recreation like baseball to cease being noisy once we zoom in? The one fixed is change, and splits like these fly round even with out modifications in true expertise degree.
That mentioned, let me present you a distinct cut up. These are all numbers on contact, for context, however listed here are two completely different subsets of Santana’s efficiency towards righty pitching in 2025:
Carlos Santana, Batted Ball Splits vs. RHP, 2025
Break up
BA
SLG
wOBACON
xSLG
xwOBACON
EV
HH%
Barrel%
Good
.424
1.061
.628
.809
.491
94.0
55%
18%
Unhealthy
.091
.182
.106
.089
.061
79.7
8%
0%
You’d fill your staff with any variety of clones of the primary man. The second man won’t make it in Double-A. I left it clean so you may briefly guess at what separates the 2, however not for lengthy: The desk exhibits his efficiency on balls hit within the air, cut up by pulled aerial contact on the highest row and opposite-field aerial contact on the underside. That’s how you find yourself with this batted ball spray chart:
Certain, Ben, you may say. We’ve already heard concerning the pulled fly ball revolution. We all know that hitters do higher after they pull the ball than after they don’t. However I feel that understates simply how a lot Santana is promoting out to drag. For instance, think about the unfold in exit velocities: 295 hitters have put 10 balls within the air to each side of the outfield, and Santana’s 14.3-mph hole in common exit velocity is the sixteenth largest. The league-average hole is round seven miles an hour. That’s only one metric, however the identical normal sample holds for all the pieces. The purpose right here is just not that each hitter performs higher to the pull aspect; reasonably, it’s that Santana performs particularly higher to the pull aspect.
That’s clear from the place he hits his homers. Right here’s one thing else which may not be instantly evident, although: Along with doing extra injury when he pulling the ball, Santana can also be pulling it extra regularly. Focusing solely on his lefty plate appearances, he’s pulling the ball within the air extra regularly this season that he has in another 12 months throughout his profession. His earlier excessive? That’d be 2024. The flip aspect is in fact true, too: He’s by no means gone to the other subject lower than he’s now. It’s additionally not a coincidence that this 12 months and final are the 2 seasons during which Santana has posted his largest gaps in touch high quality between pulling the ball and going the opposite method. Extra of his hits are heading to proper subject, and he’s changing into extra fearsome when he hits the ball that method (and hitting with even much less authority when he goes oppo).
You may acknowledge this normal sample because the Isaac Paredes method. Hitters with good-but-not-great energy – Santana matches that mildew – can’t simply blast homers to each distant nook of the park. They have a tendency to do higher if they will focus all of their greatest contact to the components of the ballpark the place the outfield fence is nearer, and it actually helps that just about each batter naturally hits the ball tougher to the pull aspect.
Right here’s a desk from an earlier article I wrote about Paredes:
wOBA by velocity and path
Exit Velocity
Pull
Straightaway
Reverse
<90 .091 .107 .084 90-95 .214 .015 .050 95-100 .812 .079 .289 100-105 1.043 .598 1.082 105+ 1.853 1.505 1.728
Fly balls solely, 2023
The related a part of the chart right here is 95-100 mph, and to a lesser extent 100-105 mph. That’s how exhausting Santana typically hits it when he makes good contact. He’s not ever going to be Aaron Choose or Giancarlo Stanton; as we already coated, his exhausting contact and barrel charges are meaningfully decrease than league common. They’ve been for half a decade, in actual fact. To show so-so contact high quality into manufacturing, he has to goal for the pull aspect. That explains lots concerning the distinction between Santana’s Statcast anticipated numbers and his real-life manufacturing; he’s disproportionally hitting the ball to part of the ballpark the place he can get essentially the most bang for his exit velocity buck.
Desire a clear signal that that is an intentional change? Every little thing about Santana’s recreation has tilted that method. He’s swinging extra usually at inside pitches, and pulling them lots when he does swing. When he hits a pitch down the center, he’s pulling it on the second-highest fee of his lengthy profession. When he hits a fastball down the center, the identical is true. He’s swinging much less regularly at exterior pitches – it’s tougher to drag these – however he’s additionally pulling them greater than ever when he makes contact with them. He’s change into one of the crucial extraordinarily out-in-front lefty hitters in baseball, as measured by the common angle of his bat when he makes contact with the ball – eight levels to drag, a top-15 mark amongst all lefty hitters within the majors.
I’m significantly all in favour of Santana’s new method due to his present talent. Santana is among the nice strike zone knowers of the twenty first Century. He’s walked greater than 1,000 occasions within the main leagues, in a ridiculous 14.5% of his profession plate appearances (he solely strikes out 16.5% of the time). He combines stable contact abilities with a preternatural means to determine pitches shortly; if Mr. Santana thinks it’s not a strike, the percentages are that it isn’t a strike. Traditionally, although, when he recognized a pitch to swing at, he labored again up the center — hitting it to heart or perhaps right-center if he was significantly on the ball. Right here’s the place he hit the ball as a lefty in 2019, his final nice season of left-handed manufacturing earlier than his current resurgence:
Now, the sport’s a bit completely different: Santana seems to be turning his pitch identification abilities to discovering balls to drag. He’s sacrificing elsewhere to take action: When he hits the ball wherever aside from the pull aspect this 12 months, it’s with the least authority he ever has. If he weren’t so good at pitch identification, I don’t assume this talent would work. His teammate Jhonkensy noelsimply to present you an instance, is hammering his pulled contact this 12 months, far in extra of how exhausting he hits it to the other subject, and pulling extra balls than he sends the opposite method. He’s additionally putting out a 3rd of the time and by no means strolling, resulting in a 12 wRC+.
I’m undecided how lengthy Santana can hold this up. It seems like a ploy, a “one silly trick pitchers can’t stand” that will likely be revealed as a gimmick after opponents spend sufficient effort studying to counter his tactic. In the long term, it’s exhausting to make this work. However who cares? As John Maynard Keynes mentioned, in the long term we’re all useless. 4 years in the past, it seemed like Santana may be on his method out of baseball. In 2025, he’s batting cleanup for a playoff contender and crushing righties in addition to he ever has in his lengthy, glorious profession. Signal me up for that form of one silly trick daily of the week.
