Now that the season is over for the Orioles, I figured it’s a great time to take a look back at how certain players performed this past season, figure out what worked and what didn’t, and what that could mean for their future with the Orioles.
First up is Anthony Santander, a guy who I think was a really pleasant surprise for the Orioles this year. Santander has always flashed the potential of a guy who could be a solid contributor to the Orioles but he’s rarely been able to stay healthy.
In 2019, he played in just 93 games but slashed .261/.297/.476 with 20 home runs, 46 runs, and 59 RBI. Put all of that on a full-season pace and you’ve got a guy who’s hitting over 30 home runs with around 75 runs and 95 RBI. That’s a great season.
Cut to: this year when Santander basically had that exact season, slashing .240/.318/.455 with 33 home runs, 78 runs, and 89 RBI in 152 games.
So we got a full season of Anthony Santander, which naturally begs the question, is this the kind of player he is? Or was this a flash in the pan? What was behind Santander’s success?
There are a couple of factors at work here. One of the obvious ones is, Santander was just healthy. He played 152 games, a career-high, and one could easily argue that, had he played 150 games in 2019 or 2021, he would’ve had a similar year.
I think that’s right to an extent, but it ignores some of the real progress Santander actually made this year—things actually were different for him a bit. Yes, being healthy played a significant role, but he made some tweaks to his approach too.
First off, Santander was making better-quality contact this year than he has at any other point in his career. He had a career-best barrel rate of 11.6% and a hard-hit rate of 43.3% (which essentially matches the career-best mark for hard-hit rate he set last year at 43.5%).
He also brought his launch angle up a bit, from 18 degrees on average last year to 21.4 degrees this year.
All of this is to say, the power seems legit. He was hitting the ball very hard and he was launching it well. I mentioned he had a career-best 11.2% barrel rate, he also had a career-best 8.1% solid contact rate (essentially the hits that fell just shy of qualifying as a barrel). So combine those two together, and you’ve got a guy who’s making better contact than he has at any other point in his career.
But it’s not just the quality of contact that changed for Santander this year—he also improved his plate discipline.
Santander has never been a particularly patient hitter. His walk rates have been as low as 4.7% and as high as 6.1% (the MLB average is around 8%), and he’s had chase rates and swinging-strike rates worse than the MLB average throughout his career.
But this year was different. This year, Santander’s chase rate dropped to a career-best 33.7% (still worse than average, but much better), his chase rate on two-strike counts dropped to a career-best 30.9%, his swinging-strike rate dropped to another career-best 10.2%. In fact, his overall swing rate dropped to a career-low 47.7%, down from 51.6% last year.
In general, Santander was more patient at the plate—he wasn’t swinging as much, and it paid off, as he saw his walk rate rise to 8.5%, yet another career best.
So what does this mean going forward? Can the Orioles expect another season similar to 2022 in 2023? I think that’s very possible, assuming health, and I think Santander proved this year he certainly has the ability to be healthy for a full season (you’re only injury prone until you’re not).
I also think there’s a distinct possibility Santander could see his average go up for two reasons—first, he got BABIP’d pretty hard, posting a .248 BABIP on the season. He’s generally been a low BABIP guy, but not that low, and if that BABIP improves a bit next year, he could see his average rise. Second, Statcast suggests he got a bit unlucky this year in the average department. While he finished the season with a .240 average, his xBA was .257 (which could be partially related to the low BABIP).
I also really wonder what might happen if Santander took a page out of Cedric Mullins’s book and stopped switch-hitting. Here’s why—take a look at his stats hitting from the left side compared to the right side:
Santander as an RHB: .293/.365/.548, .255 ISO, .390 wOBA, 159 wRC+
Santander as an LHB: .221/.301/.420, .199 ISO, .315 wOBA, 105 wRC+
It’s like night and day. I don’t know if it’s the side of the plate or if he’s just generally a guy who hits lefties better than righties, but I would be extremely curious to see what might happen if he abandoned switch hitting. It worked out for Mullins, maybe it’d work for Santander too.
I’m curious to see what will happen to Anthony Santander going forward. I could easily see the Orioles waving him around as a trade chip in the offseason given the year he’s had, the fact that he just turned 28, and that he’s got one year of arbitration left on his contract (and the fact the Orioles have plenty of outfield prospects they’ll want to bring up soon/keep in the lineup regularly).
But if the Orioles do keep him, I think Santander really made some progress this season, and I think if he puts in another healthy year in 2023, we could see a similar—if not better—season from him.
Ben Palmer has lived in Maryland his whole life and currently spends his days working as a health care journalist. He also previously wrote for and was a site expert for the FanSided blog The Baltimore Wire and currently works as managing editor at Pitcher List where he writes about fantasy baseball.