Was there any positive for Sandoval in 2015? There was the public humiliation of texting during a game and the professional humiliation of being removed from a game over conditioning issues. Comedian David Letterman once referred to Terry Forster “As a fat tub of goo.” An appropriate designation for Panda.
Is there a correlation between conditioning and performance? For Sandoval, he was simply the bottom of the metric and standard statistical barrel for third basemen in 2015. And by third basemen, it is all of major league baseball. The abysmal UZR/150 was -21.9 and Panda was, unfortunately, the runaway “winner.