Antonio Santander? More like Can’t-thony Keep It Fair.

I don’t know if you were aware, but Anthony Santander hits a lot of foul balls. Let me rephrase that, Anthony Santander hits above all foul balls. He hit 655 foul balls in 2024, a whopping 220 more than he actually hit into fair territory. In total, in 60% of the cases in which Santander made contact, the ball went foul. Honestly this leaves me speechless. It’s obvious if you stop to think about it, but I simply had never considered the possibility that some players hit more foul balls than fair balls. Apparently most players hit more foul balls than fair balls. In 2024, only 24% of players hit more fair balls than foul balls.

However, Santander’s foul ball total was second only to Matt Olson. In 2023 and 2022, the only other full seasons of his career, Santander finished fourth and eighth, respectively. Between the fouls and the home runs, when Santander comes to the plate, you know exactly what you’re in for: a great opportunity to take home a souvenir. This season, however, we’re not just interested in the fact that Santander’s foul ball appearance rate per plate was 98.9%. We’re interested in something a little more specific.

Depending on how you look at it, foul balls aren’t necessarily a good or bad thing. Obviously all shots are bad, but you’d rather a foul than a whiff. On the other hand, if you hit the ball hard, you’d much rather it stay in the correct position than land on exactly the wrong side of the chalk. However, some foul balls are clearly worse than others, which brings us to another thing Santander often does distressingly. In 2024, Santander led baseball with 65 popups. They also tied at the top of the table in 2023 and finished second in 2022. That’s why we focus on Santander in particular. When it comes to the unholy amalgam of foul balls and popups known as foul outs, Santander is inescapable. These traits combine to create a peculiar result: Santander spends a very high percentage of his reps with his head tilted completely back, looking like a little boy leaning out the window and trying to catch raindrops with his tongue.

Santander didn’t just lead baseball in foul outs in 2024, they swept the rest of the league.

Santander’s 36 fouls cleared were nine more than second-place Daulton Varsho. There have only been 14 batters in all of baseball who have had half as many fouls thrown out as Santander. And he didn’t just lead the league this season; he has fouled more than anyone over the past 17 seasons. We have negative data going back to 1988, and over the 37 seasons that encompass all of recorded history, Santander’s 2024 season ranks fifth.

As you look at this list, a few things may immediately jump out at you. First and foremost, Joe Carter truly loved fouling.

Second, many of the home stadiums of the players on this list had large foul territory: Rogers Center, Oakland Coliseum, and Kauffman Stadium in particular. Oriole Park also appears quite a bit, which might surprise you. According to Clem’s baseball blog, Oriole Park is the center of all stadiums, with 23,600 square feet of dirt. However, if you look at the way that disgusting territory is spread out, it all starts to make more sense. To show you what I mean, I overlaid the disgusting terrain of Oriole Park onto Tropicana Field. The yellow area is in play at the Trop, the purple area is in play at Camden Yards, and the red area is in play at both parks.

The Trop ranks fifth in baseball, with 1,700 square feet more dirt territory than Camden Yards. However, most of that extra territory is along the line beyond the infield, where it takes an extremely long path before anyone can make a play on a ball. Oriole Park is a little deeper right behind the plate, where the catcher has an easy chance to block a popup.

So Santander’s home stadium didn’t do him any favors, but there’s more to the story than that. This is about who Santander is as a batsman. From the first table in this article, you may have noticed that the players included tend to share a certain approach. Santander, Varsho, Bregman, Paredes, and Santana all specialize in shooting the ball in the air, and this approach can lead to a player being ahead on many shots, down on many shots, or both. Put them together and you have a recipe for making imperfect contact with the bottom of the ball.

Santander also does its best at the back of the area. Here’s a heat map showing his above-average runs. There’s basically nothing but blue once you get to the center of the area and beyond.

With a heat map like that, no one should be trying to get Santander out in the bottom third of the zone, and pitchers are definitely aware of that. In 2024, 49.7% of the pitches he saw were fastballs or cutters, the seventh-highest rate among players who saw at least 750 pitches. The average step he saw crossed the plate at a height of 2.45 feet, the fifth highest among that cohort. When you see such high heat, you’re bound to get hit more balls. Next thing you know, you have a spray chart that looks like the dregs of the Dippin’ Dots container.

Although both his profile and his level of play at home are pushing him towards this dubious distinction, it is important to highlight how Santander is an exception. In the last three seasons, Santander has suffered 79 fouls, 15 more than second-placed José Ramírez. On our all-time list of fouls busted, Santander’s 2024 season is the only top 30 season to come in the last 10 years. I’m honestly not 100% sure why this might be. That’s a bit surprising in light of the fact that, on a per-court basis, the league’s foul rate has been steadily increasing since at least 2002, and the pop-up rate has remained fairly constant over the past 20 years. It’s something I’ll think about in the future, but for now it makes the season that Santander has put together even more absurd.