Nolan Schanuel: An Angels Unicorn for the Discerning Fan

About two months in the past, the Los Angeles Angels have been making an attempt as laborious as they might to cling onto the again of the AL Wild Card chase. If they might do this, they might keep the faint hope of convincing Shohei Ohtani, their once-in-six-lifetimes celebrity free-agent-to-be, that Orange County was a spot the place he may win for the remainder of his profession.

They threw all the pieces on the wall — traded the highest tier of their farm system for short-term pitching assist, revamped their outfield, and spent a lottery decide on a university first baseman, seemingly with the specific goal of dashing him to the majors in time to assist with the playoff push. How’d all that go? Awful, as you may anticipate. Mike Trout bought harm, Taylor Ward bought harm, then Trout bought harm once more. Lucas Giolito allowed 28 runs in 32 2/3 innings in his six begins with the Angels.

This week, the Halos made the unprecedented and controversial choice to place their leases on waivers, in a last-ditch try and get again underneath the posh tax threshold to allow them to obtain a better draft decide as compensation for Ohtani leaving. All that sounds completely horrendous, doesn’t it?

But the information just isn’t all dangerous, as a result of that school first baseman, Nolan Schanuel, has been fairly good in his first style of massive league motion. Even higher: He’s been attention-grabbing. Let’s have a look.

When I spoke to Schanuel earlier this week, he stated that when the draft was approaching, he didn’t know the place he was going to go, however he knew that the Angels had a repute for transferring their hitting prospects by means of the minors shortly. That made them a match for the then-Florida Atlantic first baseman, who was considered as one of many extra polished school hitters within the draft and a candidate to achieve the majors in a rush. As a junior at FAU, Schanuel hit .447/.615/.868 with 19 dwelling runs and 14 stolen bases in 15 makes an attempt. That’s a masher, even when he wasn’t taking part in in a significant convention.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t contact a draft prospect like Schanuel with a 10-foot pole. Not within the first spherical, and undoubtedly not within the high 15. Amateur first basemen have a low ceiling due to their restricted defensive potential, and anybody who’s taking part in first base at 18 or 20 years outdated often isn’t going to finish up stealing plenty of bases when he’s 28 or 30. Like operating backs in soccer, MLB groups averted such first basemen excessive within the draft for some time as soon as scouting and draft evaluation grew to become extra systematized.

Then Paul Goldschmidt, Rhys Hoskins, and Pete Alonso got here alongside and proved that school first basemen, even right-right school first basemen, can flip into worthwhile large leaguers, even stars. A couple of years later, Spencer Torkelson, Andrew Vaughn, and Evan White got here alongside and strengthened the chance inherent in such a prospect not popping out and raking instantly. The wheel within the sky retains on turnin’, because the poet stated.

More than that, I don’t like spending a excessive first-round decide on a participant for the specific goal of getting assist to the majors shortly. That’s the place you draft (hopefully) your subsequent All-Star, not midseason reinforcements. But the Angels have been in a novel place, in order that they took Schanuel and put him to work.

Less than six weeks elapsed from draft night time to Schanuel’s main league debut. That’s not a very long time to study.

“Everything’s a little bit faster each step of the way,” he says. “When I first got to Arizona, to when I went to Alabama, and now here, each step gets a little bit faster. You just try to slow yourself down, little adjustments like that.”

It positive didn’t appear to be he wanted to study a lot. The man had posted Barry Bonds’ 2004 season, plus 85 factors of batting common, in his draft 12 months. In 22 minor league video games throughout three ranges, he hit a cumulative .365/.505/.487 with 21 walks and simply 10 strikeouts. His two-game cease at Inland Empire of the California League was significantly fruitful: In two video games, he went 5-for-6 with a stroll, a sacrifice fly, and a hit-by-pitch. That’s .833/.778/.883, which I believe is a novel slash line for a minor league cease of any size.

“I’ve seen the ball really well,” Schanuel says. “Everything’s going my way. But I did have a bad at-bat where I rolled over and it found the hole. I’d say I got pretty lucky. In baseball, it’s half luck. You could hit a ball 110 mph for four at-bats and go 0-for-4, or you could hit four balls 60 mph and go 4-for-4 with four singles.”

And since reaching the majors, Schanuel has not seen the ball any much less nicely. He’s recorded at the least one hit in every of his first 10 large league video games, the longest hitting streak to begin a profession in Angels historical past.

One of the extra vital non-Ohtani, non-Trout questions going through the Angels within the close to time period is that this: How good can Schanuel be?

I actually do not know, is the extraordinarily unsatisfying reply. And that’s why I’ve come to love him, now that he’s within the majors. Schanuel has one distinctive ability, and one extraordinarily odd high quality to his recreation that giveth and taketh away.

That ability is the flexibility to get on base. Schanuel instructed Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register how, in school, he’d depart the batting cage if he swung at a ball or took a strike. Over time, he developed a preternatural potential to separate wheat from chaff, and to date that ability has translated to the majors. A pair occasions throughout the Angels’ go to to Philadelphia, I seen that Schanuel bought barely however visibly miffed after taking referred to as strikes on pitches barely outdoors the zone. This from a man who was in school so just lately, any open condiments he left in his dorm fridge are in all probability all nonetheless good.

Whatever occurs, Schanuel goes to attract plenty of walks, and he’s not going to get himself out swinging at trash.

So let’s speak in regards to the bizarre factor: His batting stance.

The first MLB RBI for @NSchanuel! ?#GoHalos pic.twitter.com/tMm9deLH0X

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) August 24, 2023

Schanuel hits standing straight up, together with his fingers approach over his head and his again arched. He stays again as he takes an enormous leg kick, after which brings his fingers down and thru the ball. That’s how he’s hit since his freshman 12 months at FAU.

“I didn’t hit any home runs in high school and felt like I needed to make a change to unlock some power,” Schanuel says. “Right when I got on campus, hitting coach Greg Mamula [now the head coach at the University of Delaware] helped me unlock that. After that, it all opened up. It really lets me get into my back hip and back knee, and get my hands extended.”

Let’s come again to the ability in a minute.

Schanuel’s hand place and again posture invitations comparability to Craig Counsell.

But the parallels disintegrate round belt-level. Counsell hit from a wide-open stance, together with his legs splayed in a deep crouch. Sort of like Jeff Bagwell in a corset. Schanuel is extra upright (along with being a lot taller than Counsell to begin with) and stands together with his toes degree, proper on high of the plate.

And I do imply proper on high of the plate. He’s bought the balls of his toes on the within chalk of the batter’s field. It’s potential to face nearer to the plate, I suppose, however provided that you put on size-eight sneakers.

As you may anticipate, this implies Schanuel will get hit with plenty of pitches. Between school, the minors, and his stint with the majors, Schanuel has worn it 21 occasions this 12 months in simply 91 video games. Given that he wears a large elbow guard and holds his fingers so excessive, he doesn’t carry any uncommon danger of getting plunked within the fingers or wrist and struggling something worse than a bruise.

Speaking because the founder (and possibly solely member) of the Brandon Guyer fan membership, this delights me. Getting hit that a lot has an apparent optimistic influence, so to talk, on Schanuel’s on-base proportion. He bought hit 40 occasions in 172 video games on the school degree, the place pitcher command is worse and hit batters are a bit extra widespread. But if he can get hit simply 20 occasions a season, that would add as a lot as 35 factors to his OBP over the course of a 12 months.

Now, for higher or worse, it’s time to speak about Schanuel’s energy.

You might need seen a typical theme about Schanuel’s numbers on the skilled degree, each his minor league stats and his .324/.457/.351 main league slash line by means of 10 video games. Specifically: He’s on base continuously, however isn’t precisely placing up best energy numbers for a primary baseman.

That’s due to the swing, which for all its different virtues has Schanuel attacking down on the ball. As a outcome, he hits plenty of groundballs. That’s not inherently a foul factor. Dylan Crews bought dinged for being too ground-and-pound earlier than the draft as nicely. (This was the Paul Skenes’ fastball form of place gamers on this draft class, the fault that bought talked up so folks wouldn’t assume these massively hyped prospects have been actually excellent.) Even for a nook man, it’s not a deadly flaw. Christian Yelich gained an MVP when he was among the many league leaders in groundball price.

Unfortunately, “down” just isn’t the place the house runs are. It issues much less how sturdy and prolonged Schanuel will get if he’s beating the ball into the grass. At this level in his profession, it’s in all probability not truthful to deal with Schanuel’s batted ball stats as something greater than anecdotal. But with that caveat, he’s put 12 balls in play with a median launch angle of 1.9 levels, which might tie Tim Anderson for the bottom common launch angle within the league.

Of the 31 balls Schanuel has put in play within the majors, 17 have been grounders and 13 of these have been hit at a unfavourable launch angle. He can hit the ball laborious; he has 10 line drives this 12 months as nicely. And whereas Schanuel isn’t the most important 6-foot-4, 220-pound athlete I’ve ever seen, he’s solely 21 and is lean in such a approach that it wouldn’t shock me if he placed on extra muscle within the subsequent couple years. It’s not an enormous stretch to think about him as an elite all-fields line drive hitter.

But till and until he learns to maintain the ball off the deck, Schanuel’s uncommon swing leaves him weak in two areas. The first is that his energy may not translate as nicely to extra-base hits as would equal energy on a extra conventional swing. Schanuel’s 12 large league hits comprise 11 singles and one double down the appropriate discipline line.

The second disadvantage is that hitters who hit the ball laborious and on the bottom can hit into bucketloads of double performs, significantly hitters like Schanuel who don’t run all that nicely. This 12 months at FAU, Schanuel hit into 11 double performs, which is as many as any two of his teammates put collectively. The Owls performed 59 video games this season, of which Schanuel appeared in 58. Over the course of a 162-game season, that’s a 30-GIDP tempo. It’s been 9 years since anybody grounded into that many double performs in a season, and there have been simply 18 seasons of 30 or extra double performs in all of MLB historical past.

On the opposite hand, the 16 gamers who’ve breached the 30-double play barrier (Jim Rice did it thrice) embrace seven Hall of Famers, two non-Hall of Famers who gained MVP awards (Miguel Tejada and Jackie Jensen), and Matt Holliday, who made seven All-Star groups and practically gained an MVP himself. So possibly Schanuel ought to simply hold doing what he’s doing.

Between his ability set, uncommon strategy, and distinctive skilled growth path (or at the least, uniquely quick skilled growth path), there’s not a participant on the market fairly like Schanuel. That makes him tough to challenge, however completely fascinating to comply with.