Can Pablo Sandoval Keep Hacking?

He still flabbergasts me at the way he makes hard contact with half/three-fourths swings.

It’s fun to watch, but I’m not sure how long it’s going to last. Hopefully for the next 10 years…

I’m sure he’ll have some tough times, but I also think he’s going to be a really good hitter. The only question is what position he can/will play in the field.

I love watching Pablo play and smash baseballs all over the place. On the other hand, my friend has him on his fantasy team, and I want his team to tank. Best case scenario: Sandoval is awesome, and the rest of his team gets hit with crippling injuries and suck.

I love Sandoval! But, that double he hit last night would have been a flyball out if the wind wasn’t blowing out like it was. It probably carried the ball 25 extra feet.

He is always going to be able to square up anything close. I can see him having trouble with pitchers who throw hard sliders or splitters…pitches with late movement. Of course, everyone else will have problems with those types of pitchers as well.

I don’t know, I remember an at-bat last season where he looked pretty bad while K-ing on 3 straight down and in sliders. It doesn’t feel me with a bunch of hope for long term success. The league will figure out some way to get you out regularly, it always does. It will be interesting to see what happens after that.

Am I really the only person who’s not into the AP photos?

Pablo Sandoval looks like he ate about two Will Clarks, therefore he will be twice the hitter.

I wish to be blindly optimistic with Pablo. Let me have this.

I particularly like that you change the captions rather than leaving the bland AP writeup.

McCovey loves him… and so do I

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/preview09/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&id=4027794

The AP photos are good when they’re not covering the text of your actual post. Don’t know if that’s just an error from the new implementation or what, but if they can work properly, I’m all for it.

I think initially he’ll be fine. As the season wears on the NL pitchers will make adjustments, and this is where we will really see what kind on a hitter he is or will be. Though if he turns out to be the legitimate threat for us then I can see his BB% increase as he may be pitched around (or way around). I am optimistic that he will be able to make the necessary adjustments to stay successful long term.

The guy puts up .350’s and .370’s everywhere, except when he does even better than that, like in spring training. I see no reason why pitchers will figure him out. Other free swingers like Pedro Feliz fail because they can’t make contact with the bad pitches that they swing at. Pablo is able to spoil them until he gets one in his wheelhouse. He’s going to continue to succeed because he’s simply better than the majority of pitchers he will be facing.

I know Lincecum is the boss and I wouldn’t treade him for the world, but Pablo is easily my favorite Giant. A buddy of mine, who’s fairly casual fan, asked in an email, “Other than Lincecum and Randy Johnson, what is there to be excited about as a Giants fan?” Here’s my reply:

Remember the name Pablo Sandoval. He’s a switch-hitting Venezuelan catcher who’d going to play 3rd base this year because Benjie Molina is the catcher and they have to get his bat in the lineup.

 Last year, he started the season in single A. He hit the living snot out of the ball (.359 avg and.597 slg) and was promoted up to AA. In AA, he continued to hit the snot out of the ball (.337 avg and .549 slg), so he skipped AAA completely and was called up to the majors in August as a 21 year old. In 154 plate appearances with the big boys, he (you guessed it) hit the snot out of the ball (.345 avg and .490 slg).

He drives experts crazy because he swings at everything and lack of plate discipline usually leads to big problems as players move up to the higher levels. The problem with Pablo is he hits everything. People were saying, "Lets see how he does with a full Spring Training and trying to learn a new position." Guess what? He found even more snot to hit ad has put up surreal numbers. This Spring he has a .459 avg and is slugging .703. He was 3 for 4 last night with a double and triple.

San Francisco is rapidly falling in love with him. He’s 5’11" and 245 and always smiling and laughing. For a "chunky" kid, he runs really well. (He looks like Bam Morris or Jerome Bettis took up baseball.

is there something that you can do that counts as a hit, but does not count as getting on base? Getting thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double or something?

I remember in the first at bat from last night, Cahill had this look on his face that basically said “this is great! This guy will swing at anything!” I don’t think he was smirking for much longer.

I believe in Sandoval. Then again, I believed in John Bowker (whom I almost took as my adoptive Giant). But I still believe in John Bowker! So I believe Sandoval will be fine. He just keeps hitting; no matter what crap gets thrown his way.

I’m just testing out my new supportive sig for my new adoptive Giant.

After Fat Ichiro took that ground ball straight to his grill, this passage from Schulman made my Spring:

“I feel great,” Sandoval said.

And when we asked about getting hit the way he did, he said, “I like it.”

Come again?

“Yeah, it’s the first time it happened, but I don’t feel frustrated.” In other words, he’s glad he got his first bad-hop-grounder to the puss out of the way.

When someone suggested he might be a little loco, he said, “Yeah, everybody tells me that.”

Pablo enjoying getting hit in the mouth (and this is a guy who has braces, as you all know) will go down in recent Giants history as one of the team’s coolest non-playoff moments; here’s my top five:

1. Thrill homering off Nolan in his debut
2. Kevin Mitchell’s barehand catch in St. Louis
3. Barry Bonds’ homer/360-spin against the D-gers
4. Pablo taking one off his grill and playing the next day
5. Anytime Marvin Benard displayed the “stank-eye.”

Last place: Jeff Kent washing his truck

I bought a Sandoval t-shirt at the yard last night. I never do that shit, but I’m so freaking stoked for Pablo. I’ve been a fan since he was catching for the Li’l Giants, and am thrilled that he’s doing so well.

I will sacrifice a fatted calf to Ann Coulter if that’s what it takes for Li’l Money to keep hitting.

As it has been said, so shall it be done

Someone who isn’t as lazy as I am needs to find that fanpost Xanthan put up a few weeks ago, the one charting all the pitches that Pablito swung at out of the zone, and the incredible number of them he made contact with.

Oh, okay, fine, I’ll do it myself. Here.

Pablo is pretty cool.

It’s easy to always say “Oh yeah well you have mountains of evidence and years of data but my guy is the outlier”. Predicting guys to have the plate coverage that Vlad does generally is a disaster. That being said, Pablo has been quite impressive.

Quick look at last night, fouls are diamonds, the circles are balls, the x is the swinging strike, and the green is the single, purple double, yellow groundout. The triple wasn’t picked up in last night’s data unfortunately.

Almost all the pitches were offspeed. Being at the game I will say his double would’ve been a routine fly ball out (even for Jack Cust) on a normalish day, the wind was just nuts last night. His triple was pretty crushed though.

Also, Sandoval’s batting average in the minors is higher than Feliz’s OBP in the minors. And they have almost the same number of walks, but Feliz has almost twice as many strike outs.

is this why we didn’t go after Vlad? Maybe Sabes knew about Sandoval all along! What a dastardly man.