Atlanta Braves vs. NL East position by position: First Base.
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 09: Carlos Santana #41 of the Cleveland Indians rounds the bases after hitting a two run home run scoring Jay Bruce #32 against Luis Severino #40 of the New York Yankees during the fourth inning in Game Four of the American League Divisional Series at Yankee Stadium on October 9, 2017 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Phillies – Carlos Santana
In 2017, Rhys Hoskins was promoted to the majors and threw down 2.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in just 50 games with 18 homers, a 1.014 On-base-plus-Slugging (OPS).
The Phillies then said ‘thankyouverymuch’ and went out to spend the second-highest amount of cash this off-season on any free agent thus far: 3 years and $60 million guaranteed to former Cleveland first baseman Carlos Santana.
Hoskins will be okay though – the Phillies will try him out in left field, so that will be interesting to follow over the course of the season, but now they have a second solid bat in their lineup in Santana.
Also… don’t just think that Hoskins will necessarily regress much, either: in the past 2 full seasons (AA/AAA/Majors), he’s hit 85 home runs. In getting Santana, then, they aren’t trying to diss Hoskins… instead, they are adding more hitting.
So… about Santana. Here are his WAR and plate appearance numbers over the past 7 seasons with Cleveland:
- fWAR (2011) 3.3, 2.9, 3.6, 2.6, 2.1, 3.7, 3.0 (2017)
- PA 658, 609, 642, 660, 666, 688, 667
Oh? You like OPS and scaled runs-created (wRC+; 100 is average) better?
- OPS (2011) .808, .785, .832, .792, .752, .865, .818 (2017)
- wRC+ 124,120, 132, 127, 107, 131, 117
You would find it difficult to locate many players with that kind of consistency and production… which is why the Phils opted to throw $20 million per year at him.
Santana will be 32 years old shortly after the start of the 2018 season, so it’s tough to imagine this production to last through the entire life of this contract… but that’s about 2019 and following, and thus beyond the scope of this ranking.
So it is exactly for the reason of that consistency that Santana is ranked…