Johan Santana Topic Page

There's a ton of talk in the baseball community online regarding the Santana trade. Today has actually been one of the top 5 traffic days for this site's history. I thought I'd pull together quotes from around the web to get a feel for people's reactions. Twins fans are pretty much on the same page with this one...it stinks.

USA Today is reporting that a deal is in place to trade Johan Santana to the Mets for Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra.

The Twins may be realistically be out of the playoff hunt, but Johan Santana demonstrated on Sunday why it pays to keep watching this team anyway. Johan struck out 17 Ranger batters through 8 innings on Sunday. Interesting notes about the event:

Johan Santana had his most successful start of 2007 and threw his first shutout since 2005 (and only 4th in his career) on Tuesday night against the Mets. The 9-0 victory was a nice turnaround from Monday night's 8-1 loss.

Johan Santana wasn't at his best on Sunday against Detroit and him and Mike Maroth dueled in a game that was close all day long. Pitch count ultimately got the best of Santana and he was forced to leave after throwing 114 pitches through six innings. Home runs got the best of Santana; the two he allowed accounted for all three of the runs he allowed.

Johan Santana started out Sunday's game on a tear—striking out 5 of the first 6 batters he faced. Texas tagged him for 2-run homers in the 6th and 7th innings, and the offense couldn't overcome the deficit. The Twins could muster only 2 runs off Texas lefty John Koronka as they failed to take advantage of run scoring opportunities. The Ranger bullpen shut down the offense—allowing just 3 hits and no runs through 4 innings.

Friday night's victory can almost entirely be credited to Johan Santana's performance, with an assist going to Justin Morneau for his 8th inning homerun. Johan gave up a solo homer to Frank Thomas in the 2nd and also gave up a single in the inning. After that he was literally perfect. Not a single Oakland batter reached base in the third through eigth innings. Johan simply dominated, yet remained down by 1 run until the eigth inning.

Johan Santana pitched a marvelous game to lead the Twins to a series victory over the Tigers. Johan had a no-hitter through 6 innings, but the final line was blemished by a rougher 7th innings. Johan struck out 11, a season high, which also tied him for the major league lead in strikeouts.

Tuesday night's game went a little more as scripted than the past week's games have gone for the Twins. Johan Santana had another excellent start. He went 7 innings and struck out 9. He gave up 1 run on 6 hits and no walks. Santana got off to a rough start giving up hits to the first three batters he faced. However, he kept the damage limited by striking out the next three batters. It was pretty much smooth sailing from that point on for Santana. His high pitch count in the early innings limited him from going more than 7 innings. Rincon pitched the eight and Nathan came in for the ninth.

Live commentary was provided for this game.