Jonathan Sanchez the King of Upside

Jonathan Sanchez is a special type of pitcher that doesn't come around often.

He is the type of talent that is rare that even if he were to wash out of the majors in the next couple of years he would still get calls and minor league contracts because a lefty who misses bats is so highly coveted.

When I say that Sanchez misses bats that is exactly what he does, from 2008 to 2010 he is third in all of baseball in whiffs behind only 2 time Cy Young award winner Tim Lincecum and Ryan Dempster.

Sanchez gets batters to swing and miss at nearly 25% of all his pitches. Of the 67 pitchers in the sample the average was 18.6%, Sanchez's mark was over 30% better then the league average.

This type of swing and miss stuff is pretty rare especially from a left handed pitcher, the thing that has always killed Sanchez is a lack of control.

The tantalizing part of all of this is thinking about what if Sanchez cut he walks down to the 3 to 3.5 per nine inning range and maintain the strikeouts in the 9 to 9.5 per nine range. With that he would go from a good pitcher to an elite pitcher.

Maybe this is just the eggnog talking but maybe Santa will bring Sanchez control for Christmas and he will blossom like Randy Johnson did in his late 20's.

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