I thought I’d look at the performances of Gary Sanchez and Austin Romine to see how much of a drop off we can expect if Sanchez misses the rest of the season.
I think that we all think of Gary Sanchez as the 2016 Gary Sanchez or even the 2017 Gary Sanchez. That Gary Sanchez was an elite player. The 2019 Gary Sanchez has been an above average catcher but he’s not elite. I can’t tell how much of that is his low BABIP (batting average on balls in play) which should be around .300 instead of the .242 and .197 we’ve seen in 2019 and 2018. Maybe his poor foot speed is partially to blame. Additionally, Romine has likely been the beneficiary of some BABIP luck in 2019.
Still, the drop off might not be too bad based on Sanchez’s .55 WAR/100 plate appearances and Romine’s .42 WAR/100 plate appearances in 2019.
I took a brief look at Kyle Higashioka but the sample sizes were too small for any useful analysis.
