2024 was a season in which the Angels let the kids play in order to hopefully find pieces for a contending team in the foreseeable future. We’ve already looked at what the Angels have in Jo Adell, Mickey Moniak, and Jack Kochanowicz, now let’s look at 2023 first round pick Nolan Schanuel.
Overall, Nolan’s 2024 season we pretty mediocre. he posted a wRC+ of 104 and an OPS+ of 101, making him the tiniest of margins better than the MLB average offensively. With the glove, Nolan only racked up 1 Defensive Run Saved per The Fielding Bible tying him with a host of others as the 25th best first baseman in a 30 team league.
On the year, Schanuel slashed .250/.343.362. He did this by walking 11.2% of the time and striking out 17% of the time. When he put the ball in play, he hit .285 which is below the MLB average of .330. Part of that BABIP difference is due to Nolan’s below average sprint speed, which is common for a first baseman.
Baseball-Reference pegged Schanuel as being worth 1.3 WAR while FanGraphs has him at 0.7. So conversationally he was worth about 1 WAR. Considering this was Nolan’s first full year in the big leagues, he held his own. But what do the numbers underneath the overall results show?
Let’s take a look at his baseballsavant.mlb page and see.
Schanuel basically has a two strike approach at all times. His bat is slow as he prioritizes contact over power. That limits his strikeouts and helps both his K% and BB% but kills his average exit velocity and slugging percentage. Interestingly, he does well in squaring the ball up but has a very low barrel percentage.
What I find really interesting is the data box below the big one. Nolan has no real pitch he feasts on nor a real weakness.
The good news here is that his expected batting average is better than his real batting average on both fastballs and offspeed pitches. Perhaps his slower bat speed prevents him from catching up to good heat but it helps him on slower pitches. The fact he hits breaking pitches the best is almost certainly a product of his two strikes approach at all times. He’s sitting back looking to put the bat on the ball. He’s not looking to smash it.
As with all Angels youngsters I wanted to look at the overall results while weighting the second half of the season heavily. From July 2nd on, Nolan slashed .267/.378/.377 with a very reasonable BABIP of .311. In short he was putting the ball in play and taking walks but not getting lucky or slugging, although he did hit 5 home runs and 12 doubles over those 72 games.
On a team full of mashers, Schanuel’s high on base percentage would be a godsend and it still could hold value with the Angels. By putting on the rosiest colored of glasses, it isn’t hard to see value in slotting him above Trout and Soler in the lineup and setting up RBI opportunities. Those RBIs likely need to come via the longball given Schanuel’s sprint speed, but would be present nonetheless. Ideally Schanuel would hit lower in the order and help turn the lineup over for a legitimate leadoff threat and the bigger bats.
The lack of slugging from a position that is generally offensive in nature is a major obstacle, however, and one that Schanuel will likely find difficult to address. If he swings harder, he’ll miss more often and that on base percentage will drop as the strikeouts mount. That is likely why Perry Minasian has brought in two mashers in Niko Kavadas and Ryan Noda in the last couple of months.
In all, Schaneul is currently the most complete first baseman in the Angels system and he reminds me of Casey Kotchman in being a decent MLB bat but less than what you’d expect from a first baseman; at least one on a contending team.
