Despite a promising start, it's hard to rush to Gary Sanchez's defense when he's in the middle of a 1-18 slump at the plate and boasts a slash line of .200/.321/.356 on the year. Some things have improved to this point — his K%, for instance, has gone down nearly 14 percent from last year, and his wRC+, which is a good way to measure a player's total run-producing ability, is back up to about league average — but it remains to be seen if he can become a consistent offensive force. Playing for the all-powerful Yankees, whose start has been anything but all-powerful, and dealing with the pressure of baseball's most famous market doesn't help.
After all, the team has a very impressive lineage of productive catchers, with the last mainstay at the backstop position starting from 1998 to 2009 and earning five All-Star awards. We are, of course, talking about Jorge Posada, who is obviously a tough act to follow but had some of his accomplishments mirrored or surpassed by Sanchez in the early going.
Not surprisingly, Posada has spoken with Sanchez and watches his game, and he talked about the current Yankees backstop with CC Sabathia and Ryan Ruocco on the "R2C2" podcast. Instead of his offensive production, though, defense was the focal point of Posada's observations.
"I have... I was the one that told him he needed to go to a smaller glove," Posada said after Ruocco asked if the pair had ever spoken. "He had a big glove, and when you have a big glove you don't feel the ball inside your glove, so I told him to go to a smaller glove and I think he did that.
"I just see a guy that is in his head. I see a guy that, when he first came up, he was on both feet. I hate this knee-down thing. I can't stand a catcher having his knee down with people on base or with two strikes. There's no way, if CC throws his cutter down on the ground, there's no way you can move in front of the ball with having one knee down. There's no movement!"
Sanchez moved to a one-knee-down approach, which FanGraphs' Jay Jaffe analyzed with incredible detail after the shift was made ahead of the 2020 season. The results haven't necessarily been bad to this point, though he's still not a top-tier defensive catcher.
It's possible that he never will be that elite defensive guy, even with the shift away from the traditional catcher stance, but perhaps it will prove to help over time. It certainly hasn't hindered J.T. Realmuto's ability, who adopted the one-knee-down stance with great results. However, as you can see from the above and below quotes, Posada isn't a fan.
"I don't like it. I don't like where they have him now... and he's better than that, because I saw it," Posada said. "I saw it when he first came up, I saw how lateral he was. He was better to both sides, and he was on both feet. There's no way he can block ball with a guy at third base with [his] knee on the ground.
"If he (the pitcher) throws a ball where you're not supposed to be, you're not gonna get in front of it, there's no way. And pitchers, sometimes, balls get away. So I don't like this way that all these catchers are doing. I don't see it. I can see it with nobody on base — get a little break, I did it every once in a while — but with people on base and with two strikes and when you've got to guard the ball, I don't like it."
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