Gary Sanchez has thrown out two runners and hit three massive home runs this Spring – yet – not everyone is buying into a turnaround year.
Which is it – Gary Sanchez is going to have an MVP season for the Yankees (teammates, Aaron Boone, and Brian Cashman), or turning on a couple of fastballs in his wheelhouse and throwing out a couple of baserunners still limbering their legs up is a mirage that will not hold up over a 162-game season (AL Scouts)?
With Gary Sanchez, you are a believer, or you are not. There is no in-between.
While everyone believes in his awesome power and strength because we’ve witnessed it, the list of believers dwindles considerably when the question arises regarding his ability to manifest that power consistently while not consistently getting himself out (strikeouts).
Gary Sanchez: The Accolades Keep Coming
Among his peers, the praise keeps on coming. Aaron Judge, for instance, who himself is hopefully a candidate for the AL MVP Award in a bounceback year, gushes with enthusiasm when asked about Gary Sanchez.
Gary Sanchez has always been the recipient of unyielding support from various levels of the Yankees organization. Still, it’s always been coupled by equal responses that curiously demand to know – why?
According to the Yankees, Gary Sanchez continues to be the epitome of a hard-working professional athlete who is determined to improve.
Interestingly, though, Aaron Boone may have let the proverbial cat out of the bag recently when he was quoted as saying:
And there it is – “He’s helped drive a lot of his work — not to say that there wasn’t in the past….except it does say what most of us know – Gary Sanchez never listened and never cared to listen for the past six years as the Yankees tended to his immaturity and fallibility.
The Yankees And The Origins Of Deceit
This is not meant to be another of the pile on Gary Sanchez stories – but at some point, it’s important to keep the record straight.
When Yankees manager Joe Girardi confronted Gary Sanchez in the dugout in full view of YES TV cameras when Girardi determined that Sanchez was loafing to stop balls in the dirt off the hand of Luis Severino, it was a line drawn in the sand.
Subsequently, Girardi, not Sanchez, lost his job to a willing hand-holding Aaron Boone, and many still believe it was this incident that drew Girardi’s fate with the Yankees.
Rooting against Gary Sanchez as a Yankees fan, of course, makes no sense. So it is why many of us in the non-believing stage hope for and wish for the best.
You don’t need an American League scout to say the Yankees lineup is radically transformed when Gary Sanchez is hitting fifth or sixth and causing tremors for pitchers as he awaits on-deck with runners in scoring position.
Gary Sanchez: Fantasy Or Reality
But is that fantasy or reality? Because it’s just as possible that same pitcher will be licking his chops, knowing that if he can get to Sanchez with no further damage, he’ll own the outside part of the plate with flailing swings and a triumphant walk back to his home dugout.
And so it is as the Yankees move to within two weeks of Opening Day 2021.
The Yankees pursued neither James McCann nor J.T. Realmuto this offseason, choosing instead to go with Gary Sanchez – one more time.
I’m neither a teammate, manager, friend, or agent of Gary Sanchez. But as a fan who takes this “stuff” seriously, I don’t buy into it until I see it.
Forget the MVP hype; how about we get a season of 135 games catching, a .260 BA, 35 home runs, 90 driven in, less than ten passed balls, and fewer than 15 (questionable) wild pitches?
Is that too much to ask – really?
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
