Santander has been close to the same player for two straight years and is projected similar for 2024
Over the next few weeks, Camden Chat writers will be looking at the projected performance for most of the expected regulars on the Orioles roster. We’ll be sizing up what would have to go right for players to beat the projections, or go wrong for players to fail to live up to them, and polling readers for each player.
With Anthony Santander, there are going to be great months and there are going to be ones that aren’t very good. The streakiness has been part of his performance for some time, with success or failure in a given season usually turning on how high he can get those monthly peaks and if he can avoid the worst depths when he falls into more of a slump. Santander’s 2023, which was pretty good overall, was another demonstration of this pattern.
The first month of the season was one of the bad ones. Santander had just two home runs and a .642 OPS by the end of April, with 30 strikeouts in 107 plate appearances. He ended the season poorly as well, dropping a .678 OPS with only two home runs in the September/October period. In between this, he lit the world on fire in May and had a strong August as well. Overall, he ended up similarly to the previous year:
- 2022: .240/.318/.455 – 122 wRC+, 2.6 fWAR
- 2023: .257/.325/.472 – 119 wRC+, 2.6 fWAR
wRC+ is weighted runs created. The plus sign indicates it’s a park- and league-adjusted stat where 100 is average and higher is better. Santander hit slightly better overall in 2023, but so did the rest of the league, so relative to other batters he had a slight decline. A gap of only three points in wRC+ is impressively consistent, especially for a guy who’s prone to such streakiness.
In the projection systems looking at the Orioles in 2024, some players on the team are not expected to do as well as they did last year. For this series, we’ll be mostly focusing on ZiPS, maintained by Dan Szymborski and housed at FanGraphs, because that is a freely available projection with accessible recent history. As for Santander, the system predicted more of the same going from 2022 to 2023 and that’s what it’s done again for 2024:
- 2023 (projected): .256/.317/.473
- 2024 (projected): .256/.321/.467
Santander delivered very close to that projection a year ago and as he heads into his age 29 season, ZiPS is expecting more of the same from him. I’m impressed by the consistency given his streakiness. Perhaps he is consistent enough in the streakiness that the projections can expect that from him. ZiPS projects 2.4 WAR for 2024, which is obviously very close to the 2.6 fWAR from the previous two seasons.
These are solid numbers. I try to keep that fact in mind because there are times where it’s easy to be disappointed in him during his cold streaks, especially if these coincide with stretches of games where there are crucial plays requiring Santander, who has a 33rd percentile sprint speed, to chase down balls in the corner or in the gap.
A switch-hitter with almost no platoon split (.798 OPS vs. RHP / .790 OPS vs. LHP) is a valuable person to have in your lineup. This aspect has not been consistent across years, though, as Santander had a much better split against lefties in 2022 and was weaker against righties. A variety of underlying numbers fluctuated from 2022 to 2023, including BABIP (a low .248 in 2022 jumped to a more normal .299 in 2023) and K%, so for him to post overall similar numbers even as the peripherals saw a change is another notable thing to me.
One area where Santander does have a consistently weak split over the past two seasons is how he hits when he is the designated hitter. In 34 games there two seasons ago, Santander OPSed just .642. Over 47 DH games in 2023, he was better but still far below how he hit when playing in the field, posting a .690 OPS. These are each small sample sizes but taken together it’s tempting to wonder if there’s something meaningful there.
It would be interesting to know if the Orioles think there’s something to this. Santander has had some nagging injury problems in his career. For the O’s, it might be worth the downside of weaker hitting when he is their DH to save Santander from every day outfield workloads.
All of this is stuff to keep in mind when considering the key question for this article: Will Santander exceed or fall short of the ZiPS-projected .788 OPS for the season?
The case for the over
For each of the past two seasons, I have tried to will Santander – or any Orioles batter, really – to get to, like, an .850 OPS. That the team has found the success it has without getting anyone to slug over .500 in these seasons is fascinating. Can’t someone just come along and post a .330 OBP and .520 SLG? Is there any reason why Santander can’t be the one to make this leap? If seven of Santander’s 2023 singles turned into homers, he would have had an .833 OPS. That’s not so much to ask, is it?
The case for the under
It is so much to ask, actually. The reason that Santander’s not going to make that leap is because he already made a leap two years ago and he’s probably not about to make another one heading into his age 29 season. After the 2021 season, Santander was one more player with flaws but also some potential who might or might not ever be good for a good Orioles team. For all we knew, he was in the same rough bucket as DJ Stewart. Santander had a career .290 OBP at that time.
Reaching the level that Santander did in 2022 and carrying that forward for a second season was a part of the franchise’s revival. Maybe not the biggest part, but still an important one. Wherever he ends up on the Eutaw Street home run leaderboard, he is a player we will fondly remember from the current era of Orioles baseball. The guys who emerged from the tanking years to be on good O’s teams are special.
All of that is good. It’s just not very likely there’s another gear beyond this, and I think it’s much more likely that we’ve already seen the best of Santander than that we’ve yet to see his best. One of his slumps could last an extra week. He might top out at six homers in a month instead of eight. He could get hurt, which he’s mostly avoided while playing 305 games over the past two seasons. It wouldn’t take much.
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