This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
Saunders was brought in from Seattle to lock down the Blue Jays' left field job, but a knee injury sustained in spring training set off an unfortunate chain of events for the 29-year-old. Originally thought to be facing several months on the shelf, Saunders then looked ready to return after just six weeks. Upon his return, Saunders was ineffective, collecting just six hits in 31 at-bats and zero extra-base hits. Saunders then found himself back on the disabled list where he would remain for the rest of the season. If healthy for the spring, Saunders may make a run at the primarily role in left with Ben Revere dealt to Washington, but Dalton Pompey could leap him with a strong showing in Grapefruit League play. Remember that Saunders is a .230 career hitter who averages 15 home runs per 162 games, but has never played more than 139 games in a season.In all fairness, the numbers did not lie. He had historically struggled against lefties and had just one season where he saw more than 475 plate appearances. Those kind of numbers made it tough to consider him in shallow mixed leagues and even that history allowed me to roster him at $6 in AL Tout Wars a season after I dropped $12 on him and ended up with just 36 plate appearances. Like most other Toronto hitters,
Saunders was brought in from Seattle to lock down the Blue Jays' left field job, but a knee injury sustained in spring training set off an unfortunate chain of events for the 29-year-old. Originally thought to be facing several months on the shelf, Saunders then looked ready to return after just six weeks. Upon his return, Saunders was ineffective, collecting just six hits in 31 at-bats and zero extra-base hits. Saunders then found himself back on the disabled list where he would remain for the rest of the season. If healthy for the spring, Saunders may make a run at the primarily role in left with Ben Revere dealt to Washington, but Dalton Pompey could leap him with a strong showing in Grapefruit League play. Remember that Saunders is a .230 career hitter who averages 15 home runs per 162 games, but has never played more than 139 games in a season.In all fairness, the numbers did not lie. He had historically struggled against lefties and had just one season where he saw more than 475 plate appearances. Those kind of numbers made it tough to consider him in shallow mixed leagues and even that history allowed me to roster him at $6 in AL Tout Wars a season after I dropped $12 on him and ended up with just 36 plate appearances. Like most other Toronto hitters, something happens to these guys north of the border and Saunders has taken off so far in 2016 as guys like Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, Kevin Pillar, and Josh Donaldson has in recent seasons.
Entering Sunday, the OPS leaderboard had Saunders third at .997 behind only David Ortiz (1.136) and Daniel Murphy (1.002). By wRC+, Saunders and Murphy are tied for second place at 166 and both trail Ortiz (194) by quite a bit. To appreciate what Saunders is doing in 2016, we should look at his current rate against his career numbers heading into this season:
| SPLIT | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | ISO | K% | BB% | BABIP |
| 2009-15 | 1,955 | .230 | .301 | .381 | .151 | 26% | 9% | .290 |
| 2016 | 256 | .314 | .391 | .606 | .292 | 26% | 10% | .384 |
He is hitting with more power and has not sacrificed contact like so many players do so when power spikes like this occur (see Marlon Byrd). Yes, his batting average on balls in play is high, but everything doesn't fall within the .290-.310 range as it once did. Players do have some influence over that and when 37 percent of Saunders's batted balls are of the hard-contact variety, more of those are going to find holes and safe landing spots than not. All in all, his basic plate discipline has remained the same, but he's hitting the ball with more authority. Perhaps something will show up if we dig deeper into his plate discipline.
| SPLIT | PA | SWING% | CONTACT% | CHASE% | SWSTR% | P/PA |
| 2009-15 | 1,955 | 45% | 74% | 25% | 12% | 4.0 |
| 2016 | 256 | 43% | 75% | 21% | 11% | 4.3 |
A couple things stand out. He is not swinging as frequently as in previous years, and when he does swing, he is not chasing pitches out of the zone as much. Additionally, he is seeing more pitches per plate appearance. Seeing more pitches per plate appearances does traditionally work against batting average because that typically means the batter has two strikes against him and now has to swing at pitchers' pitches rather than the ones at which the batter wants to swing. For Saunders, that has not been the case because pitchers are throwing him a lower percentage of strikes than in the past because of the damage he is doing at the plate.
Historically, pitchers threw 48 percent of their pitches to Saunders in the zone, whereas this season that rate is down to 45 percent. That is allowing Saunders to see more pitches in hitters' counts than he normally has, and when he sees those pitches, he is raking them. Entering this season, Saunders batted a healthy .345/.460/.640 when ahead in the count. This season, that line is even stronger at .469/.567/.837. That success also shows up even when Saunders is down in the count.
When pitchers have the advantage in the count, bad things happen to batters. League-wide, batters hit .192/.200/.296 when behind in the count, striking out 38 percent of the time and homering once every 49 pitches. Historically, Saunders has been even worse than that as his slash line when down in the count entering this season was .155/.156/.242, and he struck out 47 percent of the time and homered once every 72 plate appearances. This season, he is still striking out at that rate, but his slash line is .214/.221/.456 and seven of his 15 homers this season have come while down in the count. Even in the two-strike situations, Saunders is maintaining discipline as his Chase% has dropped from 29 to 24 percent, and he isn't taking as many called strikes as that rate has dropped from 16 to 10 percent. In short, there is no protect mode for him when down in the count. He is looking to rake in any situation. (Side note – while that sounds impressive, how about the fact that 14 of Adam Duvall's 20 homers have come while down in the count??!!)
Lastly, there is the lefty issue. Heading into 2016, Saunders batted .226/.282/.358 against lefties over nearly 2,500 pitches, so there was plenty of data to back up his strong-side platoon utilization by Seattle. Toronto never really had a chance to try that out last year because Saunders was hurt most of the season thanks to that stupid sprinkler head in Dunedin. This season, a sample size of 319 pitches is far from definitive, but Saunders has a .308/.384/.677 line against lefties, and six of his 15 homers have come against lefties.
This improvement and showing power to all fields feels a lot like what J.D. Martinez did in 2014. After being designated for assignment by the Astros, Martinez reworked just about everything in his swing and began and continues to hit to all fields with power. Seven of Saunders's 15 homers have gone to center or to the opposite field whereas a majority of his previous homers were pull shots. When I made this comparison on Twitter, the FanGraphs' Eno Sarris mentioned that Saunders told him that he had shortened his load and moved his hands further back in his swing. Seeing how far the hands are back in a swing is tough to do because broadcasts do not frequently show the side view of a batter, but we can see a little of what Eno is referring to from the front angle.
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To the left, we see Erik Bedard releasing a high fastball. At the moment of release, Saunders is still raising his front leg to stride toward the pitcher and his hands are not as far back because we can see a lot of his lead elbow. The end result of that swing was Saunders being late on 87 mph and swinging underneath it. Fast forward to 2016 as Drew Smyly attempts to go low and away with a 92 mph fastball. Sure, Smyly misses his target, but you can see some of the differences from 2014. Note that the front food is on the way down at the point of release versus still on the way up. You can also see that his hands are further back as less of his front arm is visible because his hands appear to be back past his left shoulder rather than at or in front of it.
Overall, we have a player in the midst of a breakout season who has made some mechanical changes and some process changes at the plate and the results so far are outstanding. He has hit for hard contact before (see 2014 in Seattle), but now that he isn't useless against lefties and is hitting in a friendly home park and in a division that has most friendly run environments, he is flourishing. He is now the cleanup batter in a lineup with a surging Donaldson and Encarnacion in front of him and eventually a healthy Bautista, which should allow him plenty of run-producing opportunities. The stolen bases are a thing of the past, but he is in an ideal situation to finish the year as one of the more improbable 30-HR/100-RBI picks of the season. He has a longer way to go in the RBI department, but he's already at 15 in June.
