I spend a considerable amount of time in private and blogging life contextualizing the offense of Gary Sanchez. We’re not going to do that today. In fact, I’m going to write an entire post without mentioning Sanchez’s stick. This is a deep dive completely on his performance behind the plate.
His defensive shortcomings, such as they were, were really what left a sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths in 2018. He spent considerable time on the injured list and still gave up 18 passed balls, and many in critical moments. Gary’s receiving and blocking so far this year has looked a lot better, and that’s borne out when you track his passed balls:
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He’s yielding passed balls at the lowest rate of his career, and has almost halved his rate from last year.