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Not to put too fine a point on it, but seriously, he's really very large -- "just" 6'4", but almost impossibly thick for an outfielder. Click on the link above and scroll down to the photo of Sano reaching for a ball in the outfield, about halfway down. There's definitely a part of you that just says "no, nah, nope, that's not how it works" -- right? That's not an outfielder, playing the well-known baseball game position that is outfield. That's Travis Hafner or David Ortiz or Ryan Howard shagging balls in batting practice to give the guys a quick laugh.
Now, none of that is to say he can't play out there. Sano is by all accounts an extremely athletic guy, quicker than he looks. He certainly has a strong arm, and his pro career has included 33 steals in 47 tries and about a triple for every hundred plate appearances. He certainly could be just fine out there. What I'm wondering is: has it ever happened before, with any success?
There's no good way to figure that out, really. Weight is essentially the only proxy we have, yet it's a terrible thing to go by, for a long list of reasons. The biggest such reason is probably that players' weights can change dramatically over time, so a player's "listed weight" has very little meaning. Take, for example, four-time All-Star Carlos Lee: Baseball-Reference lists him at 270, which was no doubt accurate toward the end of the line, when Lee was almost exclusively a first baseman for the Astros. This card from his rookie season, though -- when he was roughly the same age Sano is now -- has him at 210. Lee was by no means a small man, and spent much of his career as an outfielder quite a bit above that 210, but he wasn't Sano's size.
So acknowledging those limitations, what do we know, or what can we guess at? It turns out there have only ever been 21 seasons of 140 games or more by players who Baseball-Reference lists at 260 pounds or more and who played at least half their games in the outfield; that list is here, sorted by Baseball-Reference's fielding runs. Eleven of those 21 were by Carlos Lee, and we've established why that doesn't really work--though he had some surprisingly good years with the glove, if you feel like looking that way for hope anyway.
Another third of those seasons, seven more of them, were by Adam Dunn, and that's not good. That's not good at all. Dunn (who, like Sano, was an athletic minor leaguer, twice stealing more than 20 bases, and even going 19-for-28 once early in his big-league career) is listed as 6'6", 285. He was listed at 240 as a rookie, too, so it's not a pure Carlos Lee ballooning scenario, even though that's still 20 pounds lighter than Sano, at a similar age--and is famously one of the worst outfielders, and one of the worst players at any position, ever to regularly put on a glove. The -43.0 fielding runs he put up in 2009 stands as the worst mark of all time by any player, ever, and his -26.0 in 2007 is the 12th worst among outfielders, and at ages 29 and 27, respectively. If we're looking for reasons for any hope for Sano the corner outfielder, we're going to have to find a better comp than Dunn.
The only other 260-plus regular outfielder -- owner of the remaining three of those 21 seasons -- is Dmitri Young, Delmon's much older, much heavier, much better brother. Young is listed at a whopping 295, though he, too, has a pre-rookie card that lists his weight (at age 20) at 210, so it's likely that even Young wasn't quite Sano-sized when he got his start. It also strikes me as a different kind of weight--Young was doubtless an incredible athlete, but carried considerably more fat and less muscle than Sano, on a shorter frame. For what it's worth, Young had a mixed record, but was far from a total disaster in the field (until the very end, when he was pushing 300). Young was also hurt quite a bit. It's not a close comparison, and, I think, also not a desirable one, though it's better than Dunn on that front.
We can reduce the weight minimum to 250, and get these 17 more seasons. Seven are by Matt Holliday, and I'm not sure that works--he's listed at 250 even, so 10-15 pounds lighter than Sano, and just seems like a different creature: this is a picture of him headed into his near-MVP 2007, for instance, and he looks like the kind of person Sano could swallow in one bite. At approximately Sano's age, Holliday's baseball card listed him at 235.
Another of our new comps is born DH Jack Cust, whom the A's ran out there 83 times as a 29-year-old in 2008. Let us never speak of this again.
Seven of the seasons were by the great Frank Howard, who certainly never won any awards for his defense, but could acquit himself well enough (and hit SO well) that he stayed more or less out there for 12 years. At the same time, though, Howard was 6'7", three inches taller than Sano's listed height; an unholy beast, to be sure, but in a different way than Sano is one. Howard was much closer to the stereotypical outfielder build, just...enlarged.
Finally, there's Yasiel Puig, who it shocked me to learn is listed at 6'2" and 255. Puig certainly doesn't give off that same old-world-god vibe Sano does, though I've never seen them together, so who's to say? Puig's athleticism is well known, and he's put up a total of 14 fielding runs in his career, even more or less holding his own in center when necessary. If you think Puig compares to Sano, that's an awfully encouraging comparison. It sure seems to me that they're different styles of athlete with vastly different frames, but what do I know?
So here's what's interesting and worrisome: I'm not sure the game has ever seen anything quite like the hulking superhuman monster that is Miguel Sano trying to patrol the outfield on a daily basis. There are similarities here and there with Puig, and Howard, and Dunn (gulp), and Young, but none of them quite fit, for one reason or another. Fair or not, Sano's body just screams "1B/DH," and most teams and managers just wouldn't even think (or not much) about sticking him out there. This is kind of uncharted territory.
That said, I don't expect a disaster. Learning the position and instincts are more important than any of this, but I think he can do it. I don't know that it's a long-term solution -- he's likely to keep getting more first-baseman-like as he goes, as history has shown -- but for a year or two, it doesn't seem crazy to think it might work out just fine.
Regardless though, no one as bulky as Sano, in the way Sano is-- and likely no one already so bulky when they were so young -- has ever attempted to play anything like a full season in the outfield. This is a whole new unknown sort of thing we're dealing with here. That's kind of fun, right?
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