Reflecting on Miguel Sanó's Complicated Twins Legacy

[Nick Nelson]

In 2015, Miguel Sanó arrived to great fanfare – the top prospect and heralded young slugging star who would help carry the Twins franchise into a new era.

In 2022, he exited to no fanfare, with Minnesota procedurally declining his 2023 option and paying millions to move on, as onlookers barely paid notice. 

Sanó's fall from mighty heights will go down as a sad, but significant, note in franchise history.

Image courtesy of Kim Klement, USA Today Sports

Miguel Sanó is one of the biggest young stars to ever come through the Minnesota Twins franchise – figuratively and literally. Both these qualities would ultimately come to play against him, in terms of expectation and perception.

A Rising Prodigy

His emergence as a youth in the Dominican Republic drew the attention of filmmakers, who produced a documentary detailing Sanó's courtship from major-league teams. Amid controversy swirling around his actual age, Minnesota was able to swoop in and sign him for a franchise-record $3.15 million bonus. 

From there, Sanó began a rapid pro ascent. The third baseman flashed his immense slugging prowess in the low minors and quickly established himself as a premier prospect, ranking #4 overall on MLB.com's rankings after 2013. 

Then, in spring of 2014, he tore the UCL in his right elbow, requiring Tommy John surgery and wiping out his age-21 season. It was sadly the beginning of a nonstop cycle of physical setbacks that would keep Sanó from ever settling into any sustained healthy groove in his career.

He came back in 2015 and quickly reached the majors. He was as advertised, slashing .269/.385/.531 as a 22-year-old against major-league pitching. Sanó consistently worked counts and capitalized, looking every bit the part of a premier cleanup man for years to come. He finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting behind Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor.

From Odd Fit to All-Star

The following year, Terry Ryan's effort to shoehorn both Sanó and Trevor Plouffe onto the roster led to the ill-advised experiment of shifting Sanó to right field. As a fast-growing hulk who seemed clearly destined to move down the defensive spectrum rather than up it, this assignment did not suit Sanó. 

He struggled in 2016, at the plate and in the field, contributing to an all-around total system failure that prompted Ryan's dismissal. In 2017, the Twins rebounded, and Sanó was a driving force. Posting a .902 OPS with 21 homers and 62 RBIs in the first half, he made the All-Star team and finished runner-up to Aaron Judge in the Home Run Derby. 

At age 24, Sanó was without question one of the true rising stars in Major League Baseball, his presence registering on the national scale. In all the talk of what a disappointment and bust he's been, people seem to forget this. For a while, it really was all coming together for him. And then... 

The Leg Injury

About a month after his All-Star experience, Sanó suffered an injury that would permanently alter the course of his meteoric career. On August 18th, he fouled a ball hard into his left shin that did serious damage. Diagnosed as a stress reaction, it never really healed, and Sanó had a titanium rod inserted during the offseason, which prevented him from being able to condition and prepare as normal for the following year.

This cascading series of events contributed to a completely disastrous 2018 campaign, during which Minnesota took the drastic step of demoting a broken Sanó from the majors to Single-A, merely so he could go to the team's facility in Fort Myers and try to physically get right. He finished the season with a .199 average and .679 OPS in 71 MLB games. 

Bomba Squad Revival

In 2019, we got one last burst of brilliance from Sanó, but it was a worthy final glimpse, offering everything we hoped he could be. Following a late start due to an offseason incident, he stepped in as a spiritual leader of the Bomba Squad, launching 34 homers in 105 games en route to a .934 OPS.

Reigniting his dominant offensive game, Sanó provided many of the season's most memorable highlights, including the grand slam in Cleveland that effectively sealed a division title.

By this point, Sanó was a 26-year-old with 118 career home runs and a 122 OPS+, coming off a monster campaign and seemingly ready to enter into a prodigious slugging prime. The sky was the limit, and Minnesota's front office attempted to capitalize with a three-year extension. 

But from there, the sky started falling and it didn't stop.  

Miguel's Mighty Collapse

It's easy to forget, but for most of the shortened 2020 season, Sanó actually looked the part. Through 42 games he was slashing .236/.321/.549 with 11 homers and 22 RBIs. Then he cratered in the final two weeks, going 4-for-42 with 22 strikeouts, and carried it over to the playoffs where he was 1-for-8. 

Sanó's offensive production was solid but unspectacular in 2021, where he slashed .223/.312/.466 with poor defensive ratings at first base to produce a modest 0.9 fWAR. Nearly his entire 2022 season was wiped out by a knee injury, and now, here we are. 

A Mixed, But Largely Misunderstood, Legacy

No one can deny that by the end of his tenure in Minnesota, Sanó was of little use. Framing his legacy within that narrow scope, however, tells a very incomplete and misleading story. Yet many people are oddly obsessed with doing so and always have been.

All the way back in 2017 I wrote about the implicit negativity bias that threatened to forever tarnish Sanó's perception in the eyes of fans. For whatever reason, there's always been a compulsion to myopically focus on the negatives of his game, even in the face of overwhelming positives and legitimately exhilarating moments on the field. 

Ax-grinding columnists and pandering media snobs have been relentless in hurling lopsided critiques at the slugger even during his best moments, playing off the most base tropes: that because he's big and strikes out a lot, he must therefore be lazy and bad. 

During his All-Star 2017, Jim Souhan penned a column for the Star Tribune titled "Pounds sneak up on injured Miguel Sano as Twins get back in race," directing blame for the stress reaction in his leg to his ... diet? At the beginning of Sanó's amazing 2019 season, a local outlet blasted out headlines about how Sanó was not "good at baseball," amidst an endless volley of derision, because – you guessed it – he was big and struck out a lot. 

As I wrote in 2017, "Sano's historic power is enabled by his size and strength, his ferocious cuts – the very same things criticized by anyone who's looking for a grievance to air." Would it have been nice if he remained a bit more svelte and made more contact? Sure, but Sanó is who he is and was always destined to be: a massive human being who swings obscenely hard and generates ridiculous power. 

By singling out the negative aspects of his size and swing, you miss out on the historically rare things they enabled him to do. Sanó ranks fifth among all Twins, ever, in slugging percentage. He has hit 162 career home runs before the age of 30. 

Over the course of his career, he has consistently hit the ball harder than almost anyone in the world. Just look at all the red in those max/average exit velocity columns, indicating he was at or near the top percentile of all MLB hitters: 

His tremendous raw power produced some of the most memorable moonshots of the Target Field era.

He hit the longest measured home run in the ballpark's history, a 496-foot tank off the White Sox in September of 2019. He nearly matched that distance at Fenway in 2021, where his 495-foot nuke off Nick Pivetta became the longest home run hit by anyone all season. The man put forth some of the most dazzling power-hitting highlights Major League Baseball has ever seen, which makes the pervasive compulsion to diminish him especially weird to me.

To be clear, Sanó also had some notable off-the-field issues, and was subject of multiple investigations. I don't begrudge anyone for disliking him based on these factors. In fact I can't say I care much for the person, based on all I know. But from a purely baseball vantage, the general conversation on Sanó has been extremely skewed, as any honest look at the facts and statistics will show. 

Was he a disappointment? Certainly fair to say, especially in light of the expectations set by his own talent and his excellent early MLB output. But to say he was a bust, or bad at baseball, or "never lived up to expectations," is out of touch with reality. 

Sanó was well on his way to fulfilling his promise, but in a twist uniquely on-brand for Minnesota sports, his ascent was halted and forever reversed just as he was rising to his peak. It's something to be lamented, not celebrated. 

Especially if the ending of this story follows script and he goes elsewhere to recapture his peak slugging form.

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[jmlease1]

I don't think it's necessarily unfair to say Sano didn't live up to expectations when looking at the totality of his career, because the expectations got very very high for him after the highs of 2015, 2017, and 2019. (and after signing a big money extension) But only in the context of "we expected an all-star".

He certainly wasn't a bust or bad at baseball. the off the field problems certainly (and deservedly) hurt his reputation, and his size & weight became an easy target when things weren't going well. Having certain media figures singling him out as the safe one to rip certainly diminished his standing with the fanbase (YMMV on whether that was done fairly or not; I think the record is mixed).

It's too bad. I think if he hadn't had the very problematic off-field issues and re-ordered his seasons people would look at his "legacy" a bit differently. Say Sano's seasons played out like this: 2016, 2017, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2020, 2018, 2022. I bet people would have looked on his MLB career in MN more favorably and been more charitable towards the decline related to injury. Sano's biggest problem on the field was that he seemed to follow up his best seasons with a poor one.

He had some really big moments as a Twins. My goodness, he hit some moonshots and laser beams. He took plenty of walks, but always struggled with those sliders low & away. When his timing got off, it was so frustrating to see him swing through fastballs in the zone. When he was locked in, it seemed like nothing got by him in the zone.

[Vanimal46]

There are plenty of receipts on TD to show I was a big supporter of Sano during his first 5 years with the team. There were ups and downs of course, like the disastrous RF experiment in 2016 and the total reset needed in 2018. But I still had hope he would develop into a balanced slugger.

Whether it’s the injuries stacking up, feeling like he made it and didn’t have to work as hard, or a combination of both, he did not become the balanced slugger. My tune changed with him in 2020, and by 2021 I was ready to move on from him. 

It’s unfortunate because he did have immense potential to be more than a 3 outcome player. And now his MLB career is on life support. 

[Seth Stohs]

Enjoyed this article. I think it's completely fair. 

The thought that he was bad at baseball was always just silly. Even though 2020 and 2021  weren't great, he was still an above-average hitter who provided power at times. 

The off-field stuff was not helpful for him at all. But he deserved that. There were a lot of strikeouts, but that's part of the game now more than it was even 10 years ago. 

Plenty of question marks, and he set himself up for criticism, but he also had some good years and streaks in his career here, and I think he's got a lot left. He's been humbled, so maybe something will click. Of course, he was humbled with the Twins a couple of times too, but at some point, he either figures it out or he doesn't. 

I posted this poll on Twitter. I think it'll be interesting to see the final results. Lots of varying perspectives on Sano. 

 

[AceWrigley]

Will any team sign him to a major league contract? If its a performance based-laden minimum commitment deal, why couldn't it be with the Twins? If he can re-find some plate discipline he could be a good complementary RH power bat for DH-1B-3B, but then again he actually has a higher OPS vs Righties so maybe not. Projections for 2023 aren't kind.

[CRF]

Best of luck to him, but I don't want him back in a Twins uni. Yes, he had "potential", but that can be said for all busts...and that's what he ultimately was. At least for us. It was nice not to have him in the lineup this past season. Whether it was the various injuries, or lack of effort/discipline on his part, or whatever it was...he just couldn't put it together. He was a major hole in the lineup. I honestly don't think he's going to turn out to be another Ortiz with another team...he is what he is, and what we've all seen since he came up. He'll be lucky to get a minor league deal with some team. If he gets an incentive laden major league deal I'd be shocked. 

[Althebum82]

Sigh.  A very good analysis of the good times and tragedy mixed with a bit of nostalgia and sense of lost opportunity.

Is it just my foggy recollection, or did he get injured this season making a stupid base-running choice at the end of a game where his run in the end really didn't matter anyway?   It just seems to me that some of his injury victimness came as a result of less than smart choices on or around the field, also.

[chpettit19]

Ah, the old Sano debate. Sano was an above average hitter for the Twins overall, but was the very definition of streaky. When he was "on" he was the scariest hitter on the planet. When he was "off" he was basically a pitcher hitting. There were very few in between times. 

To me, he was mostly a victim of the hype train. He was tabbed as a savior for this team from the day he signed. They made a documentary about him. They were calling him the next Miguel Cabrera. He was going to come up and win MVPs and carry the Twins to World Series titles. Then it turned out he was simply a poor defender, above average hitter who helped usher in the "strikeouts don't matter" movement in baseball. There's no argument that he was a "bust," but at the end of his time in a Twins uni he's certainly been disappointing. 

I expect Sano to sign a major league deal somewhere. And probably not have a ton of problems finding one. He's a 29 year old who makes harder contact than anyone in baseball. Not sure why people think that guy is going to struggle to find a big league deal. I know he was disappointing here, but 29 year olds with his batted ball data and a 116 OPS+ and 115 wRC+ get major league deals.

[Doctor Gast]

I was always amazed by his size & quickness. IMO the organization glorified his moonshots so much that it was hard for him to be transformed from a SO machine into a very good hitter.

[ashbury]

At the end of the day, b-r.com and FG place him around 8 WAR for his 8-year career.  1 win above replacement per year means he's not a bust, and contributed to the major league squad.  But for his career he wasn't above major league average - he needed about double, for that.  When the defense is not good, the bar is set pretty high for your bat making you a positive contributor, and in only 3 of his 8 years could we call him an above average player.  Injuries account for the gap between potential and performance, IMO, and I doubt there can be a definitive assessment whether the injuries were bad luck or a chronic physiological thing or somehow could have been avoided with difference choices of one kind or another.  If the latter, then his career right now looks like something out of a Greek tragedy.

[puckstopper1]

Don't forget this wonderful "injury" that set him back much longer than anticipated.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26033103/twins-miguel-sano-cutting-foot-celebrating-dominican-title

As for his hitting, he had an excellent eye at the plate and few hit the ball harder when he hit it.  That is what was so frustrating.  A massive amount of potential, which he showed occasionally, but certainly not consistently enough.

At a minimum a teams signs him to a minor league contract.

[jmlease1]

1 hour ago, Seth Stohs said:

Enjoyed this article. I think it's completely fair. 

The thought that he was bad at baseball was always just silly. Even though 2020 and 2021  weren't great, he was still an above-average hitter who provided power at times. 

The off-field stuff was not helpful for him at all. But he deserved that. There were a lot of strikeouts, but that's part of the game now more than it was even 10 years ago. 

Plenty of question marks, and he set himself up for criticism, but he also had some good years and streaks in his career here, and I think he's got a lot left. He's been humbled, so maybe something will click. Of course, he was humbled with the Twins a couple of times too, but at some point, he either figures it out or he doesn't. 

I posted this poll on Twitter. I think it'll be interesting to see the final results. Lots of varying perspectives on Sano. 

 

No question in my mind he gets a MLB contract. Guessing it's in the $3-4M range (well played, seth, in putting the split at $4M, very "vegas line" of you). On a 1-year deal, I can see him being attractive to several teams seeking a RH power bat, especially with the NL having the DH all times now. It's easy to convince yourself that you can "fix" what ails him, tell yourself "he just needs a change of scenery", and tell yourself that he'll be healthy...if you're the GM for any team but the Twins. And you know what? Worth the risk if you're the GM. The contract won't kill you, he won't be expecting more than 1 year, and if he's in form he'll be smashing line drives for you.

AZ makes sense. CO (pop ups might float out of the park!), Lot of bad NL teams that might take a flyer and hope to strike gold.

[Seth Stohs]

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

I expect Sano to sign a major league deal somewhere. And probably not have a ton of problems finding one. He's a 29 year old who makes harder contact than anyone in baseball. Not sure why people think that guy is going to struggle to find a big league deal. I know he was disappointing here, but 29 year olds with his batted ball data and a 116 OPS+ and 115 wRC+ get major league deals.

Yeah, I fully expect him to get an incentive-laden MLB deal this offseason. Maybe like 1 year, $4 million with incentives on plate appearances as well as the normal ones). 

I also fully expect, if he picks the right place to go, that if healthy, he will hit .240/.330/.500 with 30 homers. 

[Seth Stohs]

16 minutes ago, jmlease1 said:

No question in my mind he gets a MLB contract. Guessing it's in the $3-4M range (well played, seth, in putting the split at $4M, very "vegas line" of you).

I went back and forth between putting that number at $3 million or $4 million. HA! 

[Linus]

Sano was frustrating but far from a bust. Very few people hit 160 home runs in the big leagues. I wonder if he was right on the edge of being able to handle fastball velocity when he came up and as it has increased in recent years he might simply not be able to catch up to the heater anymore. Then you start cheating and the old slider down and away eats you up. 

[DocBauer]

Unreal expectations of hope left unfulfilled bears a lot of weight on Sano and his perception, IMO.

Injuries did him no favors. I don't know that his being a large human being played in to those injuries, or slower recovery, or had no affect. But does it matter? Hopes and expectations don't play well with injuries that derail what might have been. (Goodness knows any Minnesota sports fan understands that).

I often wonder if Sano's hot streaks weren't quite as blazing, and his cold streaks weren't quite as frigid...if there was just a little more consistency instead of high peaks and valleys graph...would we have a different perception of his Twins career?

 

 

[KirbyDome89]

6 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

There are plenty of receipts on TD to show I was a big supporter of Sano during his first 5 years with the team. There were ups and downs of course, like the disastrous RF experiment in 2016 and the total reset needed in 2018. But I still had hope he would develop into a balanced slugger.

Whether it’s the injuries stacking up, feeling like he made it and didn’t have to work as hard, or a combination of both, he did not become the balanced slugger. My tune changed with him in 2020, and by 2021 I was ready to move on from him. 

It’s unfortunate because he did have immense potential to be more than a 3 outcome player. And now his MLB career is on life support. 

Yep, the dude pretty much eroded any positivity the fanbase had for him over the last 3 years. He played an ugly brand of baseball in the field and at the plate by the end. I don't begrudge anybody for getting tired of watching it, I know I did. 

[Vanimal46]

3 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

I also fully expect, if he picks the right place to go, that if healthy, he will hit .240/.330/.500 with 30 homers

I’ll bet the under on this slash line. 

[Seth Stohs]

7 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

I’ll bet the under on this slash line. 

Yeah, not meant as an over-under, but again, when healthy and when he cares, he can be great... I would say the likelihood of him reaching those numbers are like 10-15%, but if healthy, i wouldn't put much past him (good or bad!). 

 

[IndianaTwin]

I’ll long remember driving down Interstate 57 in central Illinois, windows down on a beautiful summer evening, and the yell I let out when Sano hit the homer against Cleveland. Folks from several exits away reported hearing loud noises in the distance.

Okay, maybe not that last part, but I’ll put that blast alongside Puckett’s homer, Larkin’s single, the 3-2-3 double play, and the Darrell Evans pickoff on the short list of most memorable plays in my nearly 50 years as a Twins fan. For the joy of that night, I can forgive an awful lot of strikeouts. 

[davidborton]

Very well written, Nick.

Sano? He became history when I read an article by Mike Berardino (oh how I miss him), if memory serves me, stated that he observed Sano entering the clubhouse and unlike other players, he didn't even go to the board to see who he was hitting against that day.

Couldn't be bothered. Couldn't sit down with the coaches and find out what the guy had or how he might approach it. Kissed him goodbye then and there.

Attitude. Both Sano and then subsequently, me.

[Game7-91]

"It's something to be lamented, not celebrated."

I agree, a real sense of unfulfilled potential, which makes for a weird sense of disappointment even though he provided plenty of highlights and contributed to some good teams. He seems like the kind of player whose problems are more between the ears than swing mechanics. If he can get squared away he can still contribute....Miami needs power. Cleveland too....that would be interesting! 

[Twodogs]

Wow, imagine Sano in Colorado??  If he can right the ship that could be an awesome opportunity for him.  

 

I just have to think, I know people have written about how he is a big human being and that he swings so hard, even mentioning 495 and 496 foot home runs.  I mean I saw him swing and whiff at fastballs last year.  I have to imagine that as big as he is that if he worried more about contact he'd still hit home runs.  I mean 380 - 400 foot shots are still home runs?  They might not look as pretty as the 490 foot variety but nonetheless go out just the same.  If someone can just convince him to cut his swing down a little he will still hit home runs because of how big he is.  I hope the best for him, I hope he lands in a situation like Colorado and hits 30 - 35 bombs again.  I'm glad he's not with the twins anymore.  At least for now, someday I might wish that he comes back.