There R Giants #33: Gregory Santos
Photo Credit: Daniel Shirey | Getty Images
We’re into the There R Giants Top 50. Over the next few months, I’ll write a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to spring. So far, we’ve covered:
For a New Year’s treat, today’s Top 50 profile is a Free For All! There won’t be too many of these this winter, so if you like what you read, why not subscribe for more There R Giants articles, delivered straight to your Inbox?
From time immemorial, beyond the days of our remembering, there was but one way to judge a fastball. The fastball’s power lay in its ferocious velocity, an absolute measure of pure meaning, which could be gathered with the utmost precision and clarity:
And lo, it was good! The legendary 100 mph fastball, demonstrated so convincingly by Mr. Bob Feller above, and later undoubtedly the province of Nolan Ryan, was a weapon so weighty and terrifying that only the worthy could wield it, and none could stand against it.
This precious knowledge, handed down from generation to generation, satisfied the needs of the baseball-loving legions for centuries. But then, certainty was toppled from its pedestal — no one knows how, but there was a general, if unfounded, belief that the millennials had something to do with this. Velocity took something of a backseat to the the power of “spin rates.” Well ok. I suppose we could get used to this: more spin = better, right? (Well, not exactly: see Webb, Logan for more information). So, fine. A new measurement came into our lives. Velocity was still good, but spin rate was an important element as well.
But before we had time to fully process this new testament of knowledge, things became even more confused. What about a pitcher with an apparently dominating fastball who excelled in neither velocity nor spin rate, like Josh Hader or Shane Bieber? New learning made new new learning almost immediately necessary. It wasn’t just spin rate that made the fastball great, rather it could be a combination of spin axis, spin efficiency, spin-based movement, perceived movement, vertical approach angle, pitch tunneling, pitch mirroring, and a proliferation of other complex terms that all came flying out of Pitriello’s Box. A brave new world was, indeed, at hand.
I jest, but truly the wonders of the new Hawk Eye system, installed in every MLB stadium (and many smaller venues around the country), has exploded the atom of major league baseball, bringing new understanding at such a feverish and dizzying pace that it really can be quite difficult to keep up with.
So what does all of this have to do with our #33 prospect, Gregory Santos? The fact of the matter is, there is no player in the system whom I’ve had more trouble wrapping my head around (in terms of system ranking) than Santos. And I don’t think I’m the only one! Eric Longenhagen told me on his last podcast appearance that he would still have Santos in Fangraphs’ Top 100, while I don’t believe Baseball America will have him ranked in their Giants’ top 20 — that’s a pretty wide discrepancy!
To some degree, the huge variance of opinion hinges on the age-old question of what makes a great fastball. Gregory Santos can throw the ball 100 mph. Given our expanding understanding of pitch effectiveness, the question is: what exactly does his 100 mph fastball mean?
Background
Santos signed with the Boston Red Sox for $275,000 upon turning 16 on August 28, 2016. He was one of the youngest members of his signing class and was already a hard thrower, hitting 93 on the gun as a 6’2” 15 year old. It was an eventful time for Boston’s international department. The year before, they had massively blown through their bonus pool with a haul that included the record $31.5 million deal to Yoan Moncada (including penalty tax, the actual cost of that deal was $63 million). That put Boston under a three-year penalty during which they could not sign any international player for more than $300,000. Despite this constraint, they would come away with two of the top ranked prospects from Venezuela in 2016, deals which MLB ultimately voided after determining that the Sox were circumventing bonus pool rules by offering “package deals” to Venezuelan trainers. That ruling came with a one year ban on signing any foreign players.
But financial shenanigans aside, the Red Sox’ international program was certainly adept at finding real talent in those days, coming off a long stretch of outstanding international classes. So when it came time for the Giants to suggest a minor piece to complete the Eduardo Nuńez deal, they were smart to look to the very lowest rung of the organization. The Giants DSL staff turned in a highly positive review on the 17-year-old Santos. Santos was enjoying a real breakout year in his second season in the DSL, posting a 1.29 ERA in 49.0 IP, and he quickly impressed Giants officials, striking out 17 batters in his four starts with the Giants team (18.2 IP).
They were so impressed, in fact, that they made the rare decision to give Santos a push assignment, skipping him over the Arizona rookie league and on to short season Salem-Keizer for his age-18 season. There, his prospect status boomed. He had shot up to his fully grown height of 6’7”, but showed an impressive amount of body control and athleticism. His fastball was now sitting in the mid 90s and touching 98, and he was flashing a true hammer breaking ball that had the makings of a plus pitch. Barely a month after his Salem-Keizer debut, Baseball America included him in their mid-season Top 10 for a fully overhauled Giants’ system that had added Joey Bart, Marco Luciano, Jairo Pomares, and Luis Matos that very month. Giants fans argued whether Santos or Logan Webb (who was having a post-TJ break through in San Jose) was really the most exciting young arm in the system.
His stats in Salem-Keizer didn’t impress (4.53 ERA, 8 K/9), but he was so young for the level and showed so much potential. There was a truly scary moment in August when he was hit in the face with a line drive. But he returned from the scare a mere 18 days later and and took the hill twice more before the season ended. All in all, the year was considered a major step forward for a dazzling new talent.
By spring of 2019, he might have been the most exciting, high upside pitching talent in the system. Baseball America’s Josh Norris described a Santos’ appearance in minor league spring training as “God mode.”
The season that followed, however, failed to deliver on all of that dazzling promise. Making his full season debut with Augusta, he lasted just two starts before landing on the IL with what was described as mild shoulder soreness. After two months off, he returned in June, made six more starts and then, once again, headed to the IL — this time for the duration of the season. Beyond the troubling IL stints, his stuff just wasn’t playing up as expected. Over 34 innings, he had far fewer strikeouts (26) than one would anticipate from the meeting of his extraordinary stuff and the low level of competition.
As Farm Director Kyle Haines would later describe it, Santos was having a tough time getting his arm to bounce back every fifth day — the primary ingredient of a starting pitcher. Even with a diligent arm care routine, the soreness wasn’t going away and the life wasn’t quite returning on his pitches by the time his spot in the rotation rolled up again.
Still, the 2019 season ended with a lot of unanswered questions for Santos. Everyone loved the stuff, the build, the athleticism, but over two straight summers, the results hadn’t really shown up as expected. True there were the normal command and consistency issues one would expect from a 19-year-old, but nothing to suggest his fastball wouldn’t — or shouldn’t — miss bats the way elite heat would or should.
With those questions lingering, Santos — like all minor leaguers — disappeared for most of 2020. When he returned, in the Giants 2020 Fall Instructs camp, he lit something of a firestorm. Coming into camp, the Giants made the decision to convert the erstwhile starter to a short-relief role after he had struggled with the routine of a regular starter. That decision appeared to reap immediate dividends, as his stuff in Instructs created a sensation amongst the scouts and staff lucky enough to see him.
After Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen saw Santos in Instructs, he decided to add him to Fangraphs’ Top 100, saying,
The Giants, taking no chances, added him to their 40-man roster, along with Camilo Doval and Kervin Castro. Farhan Zaidi noted repeatedly that relievers could move fast, and though the trio didn’t have any upper minors experience, they could still help the team in the immediate future. He wasn’t kidding! Before April was over, the 21-year-old Santos had made his major league debut, becoming the youngest Giant since a barely 20-year-old Madison Bumgarner had taken the step 12 years earlier.
Was a star born?
Scouting Report
Santos has grown into a giant of a young man, reminding me a little bit physically of the Hall of Famer (and longtime Giants’ development staff member) Lee Smith. Though there continues to be some debate as to the appropriate role for Santos, he has a powerful two-pitch mix that does seem ideal for short relief stints. His lack of a quality third pitch and somewhat uneven command profile both also point to more of a reliever path, along with his previous difficulties in shouldering the workload of an every fifth day starter.
Putting aside the question of role, the ingredients certainly seem to be in place for a big league arm and, as Longenhagen suggests, a potentially special one at that. Much like Doval, he has a growing familiarity with triple digits. In his Arizona Fall League stint, he was recorded by the Trackman system with a 103 mph offering at one point, the hardest single pitch in the AFL season, and he routinely hit 100.
As Kyle Haines says — that’s not his best pitch! That distinction goes to his slider, which he can throw at 90 mph and with which he made Jazz Chisholm look mighty foolish during his big league debut. If you don’t want to scroll back up for that clip, here’s another view from a few days earlier (during the Giants’ Alt Site series against Oakland’s alternate pool of players — as an aside: remember how weird last spring was?)
Ok, but let’s stop fooling around. I started all of this by saying I needed to talk about Santos’ fastball. After all, “special arms” aren’t hanging out down here in the 30s of my rankings all that often and I can guarantee you Friday’s post won’t be about Doval. So what gives?
I have questions! I do. And the primary one is this: is the fastball really what we talk about when we talk about 101? And that takes us back to the current metrics. So, it’s time for a tangent, and I’ll try to accomplish this without either ballooning this post to unreadable lengths or confusing the hell out of everybody (myself included).
As I’ve noted above, a curious statistical phenomenon from Santos’ career is that he’s never really missed bats in a way that seems consistent with his stuff. He’s never struck out a batter per inning at any level — in this day and age that seems odd for any pitcher, much less a pitcher with Santos’ monstrous stuff. His 8.62 K9 this year in his shortened season in Sacramento is a career high. Or, if you prefer K rate, he’s pretty consistently whiffed about 18-20% of the batters he’s faced as a pro. Again, pretty low, comparatively speaking.
At every step, of course, there have been contextual reasons to smooth away concerns. He was always young for his level, there was the beaning incident, the IL stints for the shoulder, all of his seasons were short sample sizes (<50 IP) — there were reasons, you see. Add to that the fact that he had always pitched as a starter prior to this year, and the results could be expected to be different as a one-inning reliever. Still, this has always been an element of Santos’ development that bore watching — much as it had for Melvin Adon, for instance, who similarly matched 100+ speed with curiously low strikeout rates as a starter.
This year we moved ever so slightly into the realm of public data for Santos. Now, let’s say something straight off — this is the skimpiest, the tiniest of small samples. We have pitch data from four appearances, six months apart, amounting to fewer than 100 pitches, so take this with a cargo ship load of salt. But still, there are things to explore.
The first three appearances, of course, were his short major league time back in April, which gives us some Statcast data via Baseball Savant. The last came from an AFL appearance at Salt River — the only Arizona facility with publicly accessible Trackman data. Santos’ primary issue in his short time with the Giants was a lack of fine command. Too often his pitches were either non-competitive misses or caught too much of the strike zone:
But control issues aside, a notable part of his week in the majors was, again, he didn’t miss many bats while throwing an average 98 mph fastball and 89 mph slider. In fact, of 53 pitches, only five resulted in swings and misses:
Why so few (other than, again, he was a 21 year old nervously competing against big leaguers)? Let’s go back to some of the new understanding of what makes a great fastball. One of the major concepts floating around baseball right now has to do with what’s called “induced vertical break,” or “Z-break.” Effectively, this measures the amount of vertical movement in a pitch, removing the effect of gravity (which causes all pitches to sink). For fastballs, teams want pitchers to have a positive IVB number which indicates that the ball resisted the effect of gravity, sinking less than it would have with gravity acting on it alone. This is, essentially, the fabled “rising” fastball of old. A high spin rate is one factor in achieving a positive IVB, as the spin rate can help resist gravity slightly over the course of 60 feet, 6 inches. But other factors play into this, including arm slot and spin (which we’ll get to in a second). The effect of the riser, or the fastball with hop, of course, is that the ball crosses the plate at a higher plane than the batter is expecting, causing him to swing beneath it. In addition, the more a fastball (or any pitch) is breaking vertically (against the plane of a swinging bat) rather than horizontally (within the plane of a swinging bat) the better chance it has of finding air rather than wood. (There are lots of articles on the web explaining all of these concepts in greater detail. The Driveline piece linked above does a good job of exploring the landscape of recent understanding of pitch movement, but there are many others if you really want to dive in).
Let’s look at the movement on Santos’ two pitches in his short big league time (from Savant). The top pitch here is his slider and the bottom his fastball. Focus on the “% vs Avg” category, in which 0 is the major league average. In terms of vertical movement, the slider is just a little better than average and the fastball is well below average (50% below average, in fact).
Here’s another view of Santos’ vertical movement, taken from his AFL game, and you can see the vertical drop in that short inning of work, mostly sat int he 12-15 inch range, though getting better as he went along:
The horizontal picture isn’t much better on Santos’ fastball, which is 77% below average on horizontal movement. Taken together, he seems to have what we used to call a “flat” or “straight” fastball. There the picture is much better for the slider, which performs at 112% better than average. His sweeping lateral bite on the slider is the best element of his two pitches.
Another way to achieve the effect of rise or hop is to have a relatively flat “vertical approach angle,” which can similarly create the illusion of a ball ending up higher than the batter expects. The giant Santos doesn’t have this advantage either, however, as he tends to release the ball from a fairly high angle, a little above 6 feet and pitch at something of a steep downhill plane.
And I’ll risk turning this all into a demonstration of “cool things you can do at Savant” by looking at one more element of Santos’ fastball — his spin access. If you really want to dig into this element of the game, I highly recommend you read Mike Petriello’s original introduction to Statcast’s spin movement tool, which gives visual reference to how pitches are moving between the release point and the plate. It’s extraordinary.
Here’s Santos’ spin-based movement in his short major league stay. As explained by Petriello, the image on the left is the expected spin-based movement upon release (as captured and measured by the Hawk-Eye system) and the picture on the right is the “observed” or actual movement of the pitch as it crosses the plate. Both are from the pitcher’s POV:
The frame of reference is a clock face (which is easier to understand than degrees). The red is Santos’ fastball and yellow is his slider, and the length of each stroke tells us how often his pitches behaved that way. So, for instance, his fastball most often is released at 1:00 or 1:15 and most often arrives at home plate at 1:00.
There are two primary things to notice here. The first is that there isn’t much change from release to home plate. If a batter is picking up spin out of the hand, then what he thinks he’s seeing is, more or less, what he’s actually getting. The ball isn’t moving in unexpected ways after release. Let’s compare this to the 2021 version of Logan Webb to help drive home the point.
If you look at Webb’s four seam fastball (red), you’ll see much the same thing as Santos’: the ball is released at 2:00 and mostly arrives at 2:00. The batter is getting what he thinks he’s getting. But now look at the two-seam fastball or sinker (in orange). That fastball is, like the four seam, being released at 2:00 or 2:30, but it’s shifted dramatically by the time it reaches home plate, coming in at 3:30 or even 4:00. The same is true of Webb’s changeup, which he released about 3:30 and which can arrive anywhere between 4:00 and 5:30. This has a lot to do with why batters were so fooled by those pitches in 2021, and says something about why he was less successful in 2020 when he leaned much more on his four-seam fastball.
One other thing to note about Webb’s spin-based movement here: see how the fastballs and sliders are almost exactly opposite from each other — separated at both release and home plate by 180°? That’s a great example of “pitch mirroring” or pitch tunneling. The two pitches’ spin are essentially mirror opposites of each other — coming out of the same slot but spinning precisely opposite each other. There’s a great gif in Petriello’s piece of two baseballs spinning in precisely opposite directions. I can’t embed it here, unfortunately, but if you look at it you can see how impossible it is to tell one from the other. This is what’s behind those famous Pitching Ninja overlays — the pitches look the same to batters on release, but then behave in almost diametrically opposed manners.
Referring back up to Santos’ graphic again, you can see that his fastball and slider don’t have this mirroring effect either. The spin of the fastball is coming out at 1:00 (and basically staying there) and the spin of the slider is coming out at 9:00 (and, again, basically staying there).
So, what to make of all of this? My suspicion is that Santos’ traditionally low K rates are connected to both the relative lack of movement on his fastball along with a lack of the kinds of elements that can create confusion for hitters in facing a pitchers’ arsenal. While his velocity is exceptional on both pitches and the slider in particular shows some elite horizontal movement, they lack aspects of “pitch shape” or “pitch characteristics” that teams are currently looking for and the kind of “tunneling” or “mirroring” that help create deception.
From a traditional velocity standpoint, they seem like they should be elite pitches. From a more contemporary understanding of what makes an elite fastball, there may be reasons why it can play down at times.
End of tangent!
This Season
That memorable April night against the Marlins ended up being the high point for Santos. Two nights later, he came into a tie game versus the Marlins in the 9th inning and failed to retire a batter, surrendering a two-run homer to Jesus Aguilar. A 10th inning appearances against the Rockies resulted in two more home runs, another Loss, and a ticket to Sacramento.
There things quickly went from bad to worse. Over 14 games, he posted a 5.17 ERA and walked nine batters in just 15.2 IP. That was the “bad.” The “worse” came on June 29 when it was announced Santos had been suspended 80 games for a violation of the joint drug agreement. His year was, effectively, finished.
He did perform in the Arizona Fall League, throwing 13 innings over 10 games. There he showed many of the same strengths (his fastball was consistently over 100) and weaknesses (low K rate, a few too many walks, and a 4.17 ERA) as before. The stuff seemed over-powering, and yet somehow it got hit a little more than expected, which has been too frequently the story for Gregory.
The Future
Those of you who have been taking a shot for every mention of the word “questions” in this post — well, you’re plastered and have long since dropped off at this point. But the rest of you have, no doubt, picked up on the notion that I have legitimate questions regarding Santos. I do!
But I want to be clear about something: questions are not conclusions. They’re not demerits, either. They’re not reasons to stop paying attention and shift focus to the next shiny object. On the day that Camilo Doval was brought up, for the last time, to the Giants in 2021, I questioned why he was the choice — a valid question, I thought. September and October of 2021 suggested that there were equally valid answers.
Questions are, perhaps, best thought of as a reason to look more carefully. In particular, let’s go back to the issue of pitch shape. While I suspect I’m correct that the pitch characteristics of his fastball undermine the pure velocity, it’s also important to keep in mind that we’re living in the age of miracles. The Giants like to talk about the “pitching infrastructure” they have in place to help pitchers perform their best. In the development staff, the pitching sciences staff is constantly working with pitchers on their pitch design. Their understanding of what makes an elite fastball (curve/slider/change etc) is on the sharpest point of the cutting edge, and they work with pitchers’ grip, finger pressure, arm slot etc to reverse engineer an elite pitch. Gregory Santos is a huge man with tremendous arm speed and raw strength — those are good tools to begin to work with for that reverse engineering process.
Or, as Matt Daniels, the Giants Coordinator of Pitching Sciences puts it:
I’m not much into “alternate realities,” but it’s entirely possible that without that 80-game suspension, it might have been Santos rejoining the Giants in September looking like a completely different pitcher and helping the team to a Division Title. In our reality, of course, that’s not what happened. Instead, he lost more games and more development time — something that’s been all too common so far in his career.
I know the Giants have hinted at stretching Santos out this year, but I’m a bit skeptical about his chances to transition back to a starter. I do, however, believe that stretching him out to get more innings under his belt will be beneficial to help him tighten up his command and experiment with his pitch design. The journey from Santos’ 100+ mph fastball to a 100+ mph fastball that engenders terms like “ridiculous,” “filthy,” and “wicked” might not be a long one, it might be just a series of small steps, perfectly reverse engineered.
If those steps come in 2022, he could easily have an impact that matches Doval’s late season charge in 2021. Santos isn’t there yet and hasn’t yet shown the kind of strike out stuff you want to see in high leverage relievers. But there are still good reasons why his combination of stuff, size, and athleticism have thrilled observers for so many years. The time has come to turn that corner from anticipation to achievement. Let’s hope that 2022 is the time that the elite Santos finally arrives. At which time, I would very happily admit being on the wrong side of figuring out where to rank him.
Again, there won’t be many more Free For All posts this winter (and they won’t all be this long!) so if you enjoyed it, why not subscribe to read all of my Giants prospect writing?
This was an incredibly informative post, thanks. I think you've nailed Santos. Hopefully the Giants lab can produce something here--maybe a two-seamer?
So where will he begin the 2022 season? Sacramento?