Why is Sandy Alcantara struggling so much?

Why is Sandy Alcantara struggling so much?

[Music] we’re talking about Sandy Alcantra today and I thought it would be a good time to dive in and see what exactly is going on with Sandy Alcantra so first let’s establish who’s Santi Alcantra and why is it so crazy that he has struggled now I just mentioned he is a 2022 Sai Young winner me through like 230 innings that year led the league by a lot in innings um and absolutely shoved he’s been very good for a while this is him from 20 to 23 uh sorry 21 to 23 rather priest Tommy John um 559ks is good 1.08 whip 3.14 and he led the league in innings by 28 over Garrick Cole over that same amount of time so he led by about 5% he has been known as a workhorse dude who just goes out and trucks away never a beat of sweat on his forehead and he’s going to give you seven strong outings day in or day out but something happened in 2024 and he has missed the entire season coming into this year with a uh torn UCL and subsequent Tommy John surgery there’s some common things that happen to a guy coming back from Tommy John and we’re going to check in and see what how those things are fairing and see if we can pinpoint what’s going on so let’s talk a little bit about the scouting report on Sandy when he is winning Sai Youngs and is one of the best pitchers in the league for three straight years this is what he’s doing very high velocity on both his four seam fast ball and his two seam fast ball he’s a guy who can routinely run it up to 101 102 mph using high velocity uh has been a calling card that’s a pure power guy he also elevates he throws a power change up that’s diving and he throws a power sinker that dives but he is been willing to throw the ball high in the zone as well so he has elevated well he has basically said “Hey you can’t just stay at the bottom of the zone with me i need to elevate even if my foresam isn’t technically a big riding for seam i’m just going to beat you with velocity.” He doesn’t walk people historic low walk rates so he just like you have to hit the ball or you’re not getting on base and he commands the corners he moves right to left right to left right to left and just picks a side usually against hitter and just peppers that side and has been very good at staying out of the middle of the zone and then um he uses a consistent mix basically you can’t pigeon hole him in any pitch he never uses any single pitch over 40% of the time and for a guy who can throw 102 who doesn’t just sit up there and pump fast balls throws lots of sliders throw lots of change ups he’s a slider ch change up two fast ball type guy that’s that’s also impressive basically he’s a guy who throws high 90s who pitches like a command guy what’s not to like about that hitters didn’t like it but but everyone else seemed to enjoy it uh why things were going well but like I mentioned he had Tommy John surgery so what happens with Tommy John surgery from time to time one sometimes your stuff is affected a guy who’s dealing with that a little bit right now Spencer Strider he used to throw high like he was like 98 99 every outing now he’s been like 95 touching 97 boow’s down a little bit i believe it will come back that was something I struggled with a little bit when I came back too it just slowly kind of came back as you kind of get used to throwing in major league games that is not a problem he has had his his VO is exactly where it always has been um actually everything is kind of where it is uh all movement profiles are fi fine i checked the savant it all looks like maybe there’s slight nominal changes but nothing crazy all that stuff is kind of there um I actually went and looked at Eno Seras’s uh Stuff Plus metrics on Fan Graphs this is his Stuff Plus for all of his years um this is Stuff Plus from his 2023 to 2025 it’s 110 to 108 that’s not a change that’s not a big deal right so I’m like okay stuff is the same even the even the each pitch individually is pretty close to what it was before surgery i’m not concerned about his stuff moving correctly what I am concerned about is this little red box way over here that red box that’s location plus which is a model that is supposed to tell you how well this person is command controlling throwing strikes and then commanding the zone after they throw strikes with a bunch of different metrics uh it was 105 and now it’s 93 just a reminder 100 is league average so bingo i think we found our thing that we need to dive a little deeper into command is his thing and he needs command let’s go and see how that has changed here’s his command statistics the red box is this year and this is first pitch strikes it is paint it is strike percentage it is competitive location and it is walk percentage overall of total guys you face first pitch strikes is 4.6% below his career average which is slightly above the league average but still 5% less times he’s throwing the first pitch of the at bat for a strike that is a major problem for a guy that is commandbased especially because it’s at 58.6% which is below 60 that is not good paint basically tells you when he is throwing on average how far away are his pitches from the edge of the zone so historically he’s been like 0.12 uh inches which means he’s touching the edge with the ball that’s what that means center of the ball center center of the uh line is a zero so if he’s slightly off he’s still hitting the edge of the edge of the plate and a negative number means it’s off the plate which is actually good now it’s half an inch which means the ball is is just about not gonna hit the the zone so when that happens you get less swings and misses it’s actually twice as far as it usually is go over to strike percentage he’s only throwing 61% of the time strikes that is way worse than his career average it’s down over 6% that’s a That is a lot that’s a lot a lot a lot got to fix that um and then we have competitive location which reminder draw a circle 8 inches from the middle of the zone it is everything outside of that big circle means it’s a pitch that just isn’t competitive anymore um and that’s also the lowest it’s ever been even though it’s only down by about 2% it’s low so he’s not getting chases cuz he’s missing worse um and then his walk rate is up to 12.2% he’s walked 29 guys I believe in 51 innings which is astronomically high for this gentleman um and what that happens when you are a guy like this who depends on your command to get people out this is how the swings tend to get so when when they don’t have to worry about everything being in the strike zone they can bring you into the strike zone and what he’s doing is he’s throwing low pitches lower in the zone a little bit more and those are getting shellacked while before he was getting hurt a little bit more high when he would throw fast balls not quite high enough but was fine in the bottom of the zone it’s because he uses the edges of the zone so well he is now not using the edges so well so there’s just a lot more pitches in this area and when there’s a lot more pitches there it’s much easier to keyhole you there and make you throw it there in order to get you out the more guys who are on base because you’re walking them means these hits hurt more and translate into more runs given up which is why he has an eight and a half erra at this point that said this is something that he stakes his reputation on that he’s worked really hard command and control are his calling card it’s something that’s not there now but if there’s any person on the planet that knows how to get himself back to command mode it’s Santiel Contra so I would not bet on him staying like this forever and hopefully he can get a good 6 weeks or so in before the tread deadline so that somebody can get him and he can help them get make a long run in the World Series that is my going deep that is my breakdown of Sandy Alcantra he’s going to be okay he’s going to do the thing and he’s going to be old Sandy I think before we know it it’s just a couple adjustments

Sandy Alcantara is back in 2025 from a long recovery from Tommy John surgery, but the year has not gone close to as well as he had hoped. Can he turn things around and build some trade value? Let’s discuss.

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