Patience, Young Sandoval, Patience

As the regular season winds down, it’s clear that Pablo Sandoval is the best young hitter the Giants have had since Will Clark came up in 1986.  However, the thing that will really determine just how good Sandoval can become is whether he can learn to be a more patient hitter who swings mainly at strikes.

One good sign is that Sandoval has drawn 48 walks this year after 556 ABs.  While this is not an impressive walks total, it’s a huge improvement over what Sandoval has done previously in his professional career.  His best previous seasons in this regard are 2005, when he drew 21 walks in 294 ABs in the short-season, Class A- Northwest League, and last year when he drew 35 walks in 593 minor and major league ABs.

It remains to be seen whether this year’s improvement in his walks total is really a sign that he is learning to be more patient or selective at the plate, or whether it is just a one-year aberration.  However, given his age, he’s still young enough to improve dramatically in this regard over the next few years.

By way of comparison, when Vladimir Guerrero was roughly the same age in 1998 (actually, Vlad was six months older then than Pablo was this year) and was having his first big season, Guerrero walked only 42 times in 623.

Vlad has never been an incredibly patient hitter, but over time he improved to the point where he was patient enough to force pitchers to throw him strikes.  Vlad walked 84 times in 2002 (614 ABs) and 71 times in 2007 (574 ABs); and since 1999 he has walked between 50 and 63 times every other year, until this year when his walks total has dropped substantially (19 times in 372 ABs).

Sandoval, like Guerrero, is a tremendous bad-ball hitter.  Nevertheless, even a player with the raw hitting ability of a Pablo Sandoval or a Vladimir Guerrero needs to be at least as disciplined at the plate as Bad Vlad has been to become a superstar.  It’s hard for a player who is unable to draw even 50 walks in a season to be a consistently great hitter, because he’s going to see a lot fewer hitters’ pitches than a hitter who will take a walk if the pitcher won’t put the ball in the strikezone.