Gary Sanchez continuing to disastrously whiff on sliders is bad news for the Yankees

Yankees fans got to see Gary Sanchez in action on Friday night … but it wasn’t good.

There’s been a lot of division among New York Yankees fans when it comes to Gary Sanchez. Some were fully in favor of the team non-tendering the slugger before the Dec. 2 deadline while others thought that was a crazy idea that could come back and haunt the Bombers.

In the end, El Gary got his contract and will be with the team for 2021 (or at least the first half of it), which will likely be his last chance to prove himself to the organization, because the front office won’t be paying for his third year of arbitration eligibility if there’s no improvement.

Speaking of that … one could say Gary’s quest to rid himself of the 2020 stink is off to a bad start. He made his first appearance in the Dominican Winter League on Friday and, well, put forth more of the same.

That is a vintage 2020 at-bat from Gary Sanchez. Three pitches. Three strikes. One out. Back to the dugout. Not an ounce of worry from the opposing pitcher. The concerning part? That was hardly the worst from Sanchez that evening because we can at least admit those were three very good pitches from Jairo Asencio.

His lowlight of the night came during an at-bat against fellow Yankee Albert Abreu. Sanchez couldn’t have been more lost when trying to put lumber on these sliders … and on that second one there was a mysterious double toe-tap that looks really, really bad.

Additionally, on these strikeouts, it simply appears as if he’s trying to pull everything. There’s no waiting on off-speed pitches. There’s no shifting his weight to take the ball to the opposite field. It’s the same swing directly through the sliders … against lesser competition. Though his RBI single ended up being the game-winner in a 2-1 victory, his three strikeouts loom even larger because that’s exactly what he needs to cut down on. A bloop hit isn’t what we’re looking for here.

Unfortunately, Sanchez will be under a microscope between now and the end of the 2021 season. His successes will be expected but his failures will be further magnified and critiqued. We’d rather it not be that way, but the past three seasons have brought us to this point. But it is his first game of the winter, so let’s see how he progresses in the coming weeks.

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