The Johan Santana Thread

Stewart, despite being injured for part of the year, is putting up more or less the same numbers that he did last year, which were more or less the same numbers he put up every year with the Blue Jays (AND the same numbers he put up during the first half of last season with the Jays). He's played more games for the Twins this year than last, and he obviously wasn't getting any MVP consideration for contributions with the Blue Jays in the first part of the year.

So, according to the people who voted for him last year, Shannon Stewart should be the MVP again, right?

Oh wait, I guess he didn't "ignite the offense" this year like he did last year. He must have forgotten to brush up on that skill during the offseason.

what a sham it would be if this guy doesn't get the cy

One of my fave BP writers, Derek Zumsteg, gives his (nonexistent) MVP vote to Santana. Vlad looks like he's nailing it down this week, even if (big if) the A's prevail.

more pressing: why is Santana out after 5?

i'm boycotting mlb.com gameday until maura implements those features i told her to.

re the cy race w/ schill, the only thing santana could possibly do, as far as i can tell, is pitch a couple complete games (to make up the diff b/w the two). obv that's not going to happen, but he must have it 99% in the bag, right?

#1: if Santana would have got the win, it would have pulled his record to even with Schilling (21-6).

#2: Santana finishing the last week of the season by beating the Yankees would have been too much for the NY Media to ignore. the schilling victory is more resonating as is.

#3: w/r/t: complete games.... Santana has 242 innings pitched to Schillings 227.

MINNEAPOLIS - The wife of Minnesota Twins pitcher Johan Santana gave birth to the couple's second child just 45 minutes before her husband stepped on the mound Wednesday night against the Kansas City Royals.

Yasmile Santana gave birth to an 8-pound, 6-ounce girl, Jasmine Alejandra, at 6:18 p.m. at Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina. She is the couple's second child.

Johan Santana, the 2004 AL Cy Young Award winner, was not present for the birth.

Gina Rivas, the wife of Twins second baseman Luis Rivas, called the Twins clubhouse from the hospital and gave the news to Santana just before he headed to the field for his pregame warmup. Yasmile was scheduled to be induced Thursday morning.

2 bloop singles
then a shot up the middle which scored the runner from 2nd leaving runners at first and third
then a homerun to Sweeney

other than that he looked pretty much untouchable (only 1 other bloop hit, no walks, 10 Ks in 7 innings).

Dig this: Radke, Silva and Lohse have given up more home runs than walks. Santana's at a 1:1 ratio. That is scary.

Turns out he gave up only 2 runs in 7 innings and struck out 11 in a no-decision. With one walk. His ERA's an ugly 3.82, but still... whew, I guess. (And Shannon Stewart = MR. CLUTCH!!1 Hot damn.)

Johan Santana - Slugging % allowed:

2002 .311
2003 .367
2004 .315
2005 .426

Today he gives up 4 hits (2 HRs) across 8 innings (14 Ks + 1 BB). He's still dominant but that susceptibility to HRs seems more of an issue this year.

It's odd how his biggest cheerleader has been pretty quiet about his fall from grace. Maybe tomorrow we'll see something different.

Woah ever is a pretty extreme comment.

The "fall from grace" talk is premature. We're talking Kenny Rogers on the red carpet levels of premature.

I'm looking at Santana's stats and it seems like while he's not having a monster season in many ways, he's still got a K to BB ratio of 140-23 and a WHIP of 1.01 (both prior to today's game). His ERA is now a shade under 4 and his BAA is up a fair amount from last season, but not enough for me to think this is a meltdown or anything close to a bad season. He's having a good season, not a great one. I haven't checked his stats that closely, and I'm sure someone else could reference some more comprehensive stats to prove this, but I've gotta believe a lot of it is bad luck. Not sure about the HR thing, since he's probably on pace to give up 30, while last year he gave up 24.

I think Santana's average season from here on out will settle at about the halfway mark between last year and this, ERA-wise. Or he could still be the next Randy Johnson, who knows?

Like Gear said, there's nothing in Santana's record that would lead to to believe that he's hurt/overworked/has a sore arm/etc. At the start of '04, Halladay's K/BB and BB numbers were all out of whack so it was obvious that something was wrong.

Also, we've noted on other threads that Santana has had a lot of dominant starts this year, but his more bad starts (more frequent than last year) are disguising that.

the game recap mentions that molina's bases loaded single was off an 0-2 pitch so maybe he's trying to hard for 3-pitch strikeouts and not finessing enough? Also do you think the musical-catcher game the Twinkies play messes with the starters?

http://www.aarongleeman.com/2005_07_03_baseballblog_archive.html#112072340097756570

6 total baserunners all game. Unbelievable duel going on, very similar to the Haren/Santana match-up 2 weeks ago.

Santana stands to win his 13th game, and if his next six starts are anything like his last six, then are we looking at YOUR AL Cy Young winner for the second straight year?

Seriously, my favorite games that i actually watched all the way through as I sit here right now:

1. jack morris no-hits chisox in 84, first or second week of the season, on NBC Saturday "game of the week"

2. jack morris twinkie beats braves.

3. josh beckett beats Cubs on two days rest. fucking amazing performance.

4. Leiter vs. Wright; Jose Table, Renteria ski-mask, etc

5 TONIGHT

Four of the five best pitchers in the league on a per-inning basis [Halladay, Harden, Bedard, Rogers] aren't likely to approach the kind of counting stats that win awards.

Santana is the one active pitcher in the top five in both categories, and as such, is probably the favorite for the award. He's third in the AL in ERA, leads the league in strikeouts and the only pitchers ahead of him in wins (Jon Garland, Bartolo Colon and Jeremy Bonderman) are pretty clearly inferior by most other measures, sabermetric and traditional. Santana, for what it's worth, is pitching nearly as well in 2005's second half as he was in 2004's, when he buried the league and ran away with the award.

Is there anyone we're missing? Well, Garland and Colon share the league lead in wins with 16. Garland's success, like that of Rogers, comes with a strikeout rate so low that it is unlikely that even the BBWAA would vote him an award. His best chance is to be the only pitcher in the league wth 20 wins; it could very well happen. Colon, 16-6 to Garland's 16-7, is a darkhorse candidate who could steal the award if he gets to 20 wins, especially if the Angels finish strong and draw attention to him. Kevin Millwood is fourth in the league in ERA, but at 7-10, has no chance of garnering support.

Unless Santana wins, though, the AL Cy Young Award for 2005 is likely to go to a compromise candidate in a fractured vote. There just aren't enough pitchers in the league who have combined durability and performance this year, certainly nothing along the lines of what the top contenders in the NL have done.

My best guess, however, is that Johan Santana will win the award over the next six weeks. He's the best pitcher in the league, will face a fairly weak slate of offenses down the stretch, and even with an ERA above 3.00, has superior peripherals.

9 more to tie RJ for the lefty record. 10 more to tie Clemens for the MLB record.

MINNESOTA PITCHER JOHAN SANTANA HAS 13 STRIKEOUTS THROUGH SEVEN INNINGS. SANTANA RECORDED HIS 1000TH CAREER STRIKEOUT IN THE SEVENTH INNING BY STRIKING OUT BOSTON'S DAVID ORTIZ.

4-hit 92-pitch shutout, didn't strike out a Met til the 9th. I'm glad my tix are for tonight.

some recent oddness with the strikeouts, lately, between Johan's one-k shut-out and Schilling's first k-less start since '93.

Well Schilling's shoulder is falling off so that's not really that odd.

Baseball Tonight did a side-by-side comparison of Johan Santana's swing on his double and a swing by Justin Morneau. It was identical! Is there anything he can't do?

he can't make Cy Young voters realize that wins aren't the best indicator of a dude's performance.

whatever the health reasons, a guy going without a strike-out for the first time in fourteen years is kind of odd and/or surprising.

Um he pitched 4.1 innings and gave up 10 hits and 2 walks! He got shelled and he's heading for the DL. That's not surprising at all! It's called being hurt and sucking.

Santana's start OTOH is pretty unusual for him.

um, hey, FOURTEEN YEARS with recording at least one strike-out in every single start. I'm sure he was banged up some of those times, as well. Shit, he was hurt pretty much every time he took the mound in '05, yet still apparently got at least one guy to strike out every start. so yeah, he's hurt, and that info makes it less surprising, but it's still an anomaly.

but yes, Johan's completely healthy and dominating yet nearly K-free start is the odder, still.

idk guys, wang's 8-inning, 10k win was more surprising 2 me

Schilling's lack of K is disconcerting.

Santana's lack of K is interesting.

Wang's non-lack of K is mindboggling.

THAT'S why some d00d in my fantasy league just picked wang up today, i was wondering.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Jared_Camp

But that doesn't explain how he managed to find his way out of the Astros' system.

on ESPN tonight vs Detroit.

i watched for a while. who was the analyst in the booth who wasnt orel hershizer? i thought he was pretty decent

also fuck johan, i needed a win u asshole :(

Steve Phillips, u fantasy nerd

"I've been here for eight years, and I've seen a lot of those kind of things," he said. "I've seen a lot of those guys [like Castillo] come in and leave. [The decision makers] don't care. They always talk about caring about it; I don't think they care."

we care down here johan, we will luv u so tenderly~

..on a major market team

MINNESOTA PITCHER JOHAN SANTANA HAS 17 STRIKEOUTS THROUGH EIGHT INNINGS.

Zero walks, too.

nathan had 2 as well = 19 Ks...

good job out there today guys. *backslaps*

jeeeeeeeesus FUCKIN CHRIST. I TRADED THIS GUY FOR ALEX MOTHERFUCKIN DICKASS RIOS.

You have GOT to play the ILBB league next year.

LOL U GOT RAPED

erm why''d johan get pulled in the 8th today? fuck a pitch.

count.*

to make Joe Nathan & his agent happy.

Mike (NY): Should Santana have gone for 20 k's? Unselfish team play, or lack of killer instinct?

Rob Neyer: (12:39 PM ET ) I don't know that it was his decision, Mike. If he'd pitched the ninth, he'd have thrown more than 120 pitches for the first time in his career. The Twins have always babied him, and so far that's working out pretty well for everybody.

Is this the de facto Twins thread? Because Scott Baker has a THING going on RIGHT NOW.

well too bad about that thing. he was so close too!

Johan now trails Lincecum by just 1.5 VORP points.

8-0 in his last SIXTEEN starts (w/ an ERA under 3).

Way to blow, Omar.

if not for the bullpen, he would win 20 games this year, rite?

I heard that the bullpen's blown 10 of his leads -- if they held merely half of them, he would already be @ 20.

NL pitchers, VORP 2008

Santana 73.4
Lincecum 72.5
Dempster 57.5

Webb (10th) 50.8

Johan had surgery yesterday bcz he pitched Saturday w/ a torn meniscus. :o

Does this improve his STORY for those who prefer Lincecum?

He could have been playing baseball in October if he wasn't so greedy.

This guy is a true artist -- too bad they can't get him any runs.

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/johan-santana-nasty-as-ever/

johan shreds for all time x1000
my first pick batches

another night of nonsupport...

pretty funny Mets blogger:

Do I think Johan Santana is of sound body? HELL NO! Santana was asked if his problems of late are physical and he said no. When asked a second time he said no, by the fourth or fifth time he finally broke down that he had an issue with his back that Bobby Ojeda said could have forced him to alter his delivery. Then there is the issue of his decrease in velocity and the question of whether Santana has a tired arm or (gulp!!!!!!) the dread DEAD ARM!!!.

http://www.kranepoolsociety.com/2009/06/15/dont-know-much-about-his-tory-dont-know-much-bi-ology/

has had shoulder soreness since All-Star break, will miss tomorrow's start to see doctor

actually make that ELBOW

I don't think seeing an elbow is going to help his shoulder.

last 5 starts:

0.74 ERA

1-0

Not only that but against 4 of the better teams in baseball.

I'm glad you've come around!

Are you kidding, I take special care in rejoicing in the smallest of sample sizes. Cmon now.

His season numbers are going to be right around where they usually are and you know it.

http://www.tmz.com/2010/06/23/new-york-mets-johan-santana-pitcher-sexual-battery-florida-rape/

set to face his old team Saturday (vs THE PAVANO).

Yowch.

we only hear from you on certain nights

Scroll up old man!

Where is your god now, "Johan Santana"?

who are we kidding, there is no god

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BDWTv16CQAATEMY.jpg