A Tale of Two Santanas April 4th, 2006 at 7:00 am
The last two seasons Johan Santana has been arguably the most dominant pitcher in baseball. He has more strikeouts than any pitcher over the past two seasons and has finished each season with an ERA below 3.00. However, over these same two seasons we’ve come to know two different Johan Santanas. We have “Johan the Great” and “Johan the Absolutely Amazing”. Johan has built a reputation of starting off the season a little slow, and then coming on strong after the All-Star break. Let’s take a look at the numbers:
| Category | ERA | IP | SO | AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 3.55 | 33.0 | 45 | .224 |
| May | 3.83 | 42.1 | 46 | .222 |
| June | 3.93 | 36.2 | 40 | .194 |
| July | 3.45 | 31.1 | 23 | .290 |
| August | 1.39 | 45.1 | 41 | .166 |
| Sept-Oct | 1.75 | 36.0 | 34 | .189 |
| Pre All-Star | 3.98 | 124.1 | 143 | .226 |
| Post All-Star | 1.59 | 107.1 | 95 | .192 |
| Category | ERA | IP | SO | AVG |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 5.40 | 28.1 | 24 | .273 |
| May | 5.79 | 32.2 | 30 | .313 |
| June | 2.39 | 37.2 | 46 | .160 |
| July | 1.17 | 46.0 | 61 | .095 |
| August | 2.08 | 43.1 | 52 | .188 |
| Sept-Oct | 0.45 | 40.0 | 52 | .147 |
| Pre All-Star | 3.78 | 123.2 | 136 | .221 |
| Post All-Star | 1.21 | 104.1 | 129 | .154 |
As you can see, in the last two seasons his pre All-Star ERA has been more than 2 points higher than his post All-Star. For almost any pitcher but Santana 3.78 and 3.98 are not bad ERAs. A pitcher like that would be in the top half of any rotation in baseball. The 1.21 and 1.59 ERAs Santana has posted in the second halves have been spectacular. He’s so good in the second half you can pretty expect the Twins to win on days he pitches.
What if we could have “Johan the Absolutely Amazing” all year long? He’d be a 20+ game winner, no doubt. The Twins would likely pick up 3-5 more victories in the first half of the season, which could be crucial this season as we expect to see a fierce 3-team race in the Central division. One concern is that Johan didn’t get enough work this spring to get into his groove. In his final start of the spring he only went 4 innings. He did have a high pitch count for four innings, but you’d still like to see him stretched out a little longer in his final start of the season. Will he be able to pitch more than 6 innings tonight?
Tonight Johan will face off against Roy Halladay. Halladay ranks right up there in the top 5 pitchers along with Santana, so it’s going to be a tough game. Hopefully Johan is in midseason form and the Twins’ bats are at least hot enough to get a couple runs of Halladay. Two runs might be all it takes to win tonight.
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3 Comments
Kris wrote: April 4th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Yep, looks like the lineup will be:
1. Stewart, LF
2. Castillo, 2B
3. Mauer, C
4. White, DH
5. Hunter, CF
6. Morneau, 1B
7. Bastista, 3B
8. Kubel, RF
9. Castro, SS
Almost seems like a waste to stick Kubel between 2 terrible hitters. Oh well.
Chris wrote: April 5th, 2006 at 1:38 am
I agree moving him up to 7 makes more sense to me but hey Batista suprised me and went deep tonight maybe this will work out.
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Chris wrote: April 4th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Just a little pregame addition, Jason Kubel will be in right field tonight for the Twins.