Santana and his Elbow

by halfchest on Feb 28, 2009 1:01 PM EST Comment 10 comments

I've noticed a few small articles about this around the internet and while it's likely nothing as Twins fans and the recent history with "elbow stiffness" I'd be real nervous as a Mets fan. The Santana trade might start to look even smarter if this does turn out to be a serious injury. I would never wish an injury on anyone, well other than John Rocker and A.J., um and other various white sox haha. What I'm saying is I hope it's nothing but it'll be an interesting situation to watch as I know Santana's possible injury was heavily discussed in the Twins blogosphere last year around this time.

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This is why the Twins couldn't meet his demands

He’s always pitched through nagging injuries, and pitched very well, I might add. But if he needs TJ surgery or something, the Twins could not afford to pay him $25 million to sit on the DL. So even if a couple of the guys the Twins got in the deal turn out to be busts, it was probably the right thing to do. The real question was not whether to keep him or not (the Twins offered him a five-year $100M deal). The question was whether to trade him or let him walk after squeezing another year out of him and get draft picks. That’s still an open question, but when all is said and done, I think it will be the right decision to trade him.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Feb 28, 2009 2:13 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

With the emergence of Span last year and his ability to cover CF I would love to go back in time and see how last year would have been had we kept Santana. The bullpen would have likely been stronger by having one of our starters in there. We likely never would have had to get Livan Hernandez to satisfy that veteran craving of Gardy’s and had we won a few more games by the trading deadline maybe management would have went for broke and tried to pick up Adrian Beltre or Adam Dunn (as we wouldn’t have been so heavy on OF w/o Gomez). Of course this is all 20 20 hindsight involved.

Sorry I kinda went off there but I do think back to how different last year might have been had we kept Santana around. That said I’m happy with the trade and agree that we couldn’t have taken the risk of injury with a long term contract.

Peyton's good but have you ever heard of Jeff George?

by halfchest on Feb 28, 2009 3:10 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I often wonder what might have been

It’s pretty clear to me that we would have won the division. Not sure what else. But I don’t think anyone expected the Twins to win 88 games last year even with Santana. So it seemed at the time the most prudent thing was to play for 2009 or 2010. If you keep him and let him walk, the soonest you see any benefit from that is 2012. This way, we have likely three guys to help us in 2010 and four guys for 2011.

You can say the same thing for the Garza trade. If we hadn’t made that trade last year, I feel pretty confident that we would have won the division and perhaps advanced in the playoffs. But let’s wait ‘till the end of 2009 to determine who won that trade long term. I think we’ll be a better team in 2010 because of that trade than we would have been without it. We didn’t have any great bats in the upper levels but we had an abundance of arms. So you trade an elite arm for an elite bat. It ends up being a good trade for both clubs, if Delmon lives up to his elite status. Last year, Garza was elite and Delmon was mediocre. If Delmon has a breakout year this year, we can say it was a pretty even trade that makes both teams better.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on Feb 28, 2009 4:35 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

My pipe dream last offseason

The Delmon deal (and, to a lesser extent, the Santana deal, as it added an OF) killed this, but I was holding out hope last year that the Twins would sign Barry Bonds to share the LF/DH role with Kubel. As good as the offense ended up last year, just imagine it after replacing Delmon Young with the best hitter of the last three quarters of a century.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Mar 2, 2009 12:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

+1

I’ve been saying the same thing. I still wish they would. Gomez to AAA, Span in center, Kubel/Delmon/Cuddyer share the corner outfield and DH spots.

by snolls on Mar 3, 2009 12:06 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

In baseball

you can go back and reconstruct an alternate reality, but the likelihood of it actually panning out that way is remote, at best.

What looks bad (Cuddyer getting hurt) can turn out to be a revelation (Spann’s .389 OBP and solid defense). And what looks good (’08 bullpen) can swing the other way in a heartbeat.

Johan pitched a lot of innings the last 4 seasons. His pitch counts get high quick. Hitters learn to foul off his change-up and start to look for the fastball. He will likely peak out earlier than a lot of starters, just by virtue of not having a large girth to play with.

Hopefully the elbow thing is not serious. I think he is a great competitor and fun to watch.

by Old Twins Cap on Feb 28, 2009 9:54 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

Hopefully the elbow thing is not serious. I think he is a great competitor and fun to watch.

I completely agree. With the money and the trade, I understand where Santana was coming from. He was willing to cut MN a break the year earlier and the FO wasn’t willing to deal. I’d probably do the same thing if I was in his position. So I don’t fault him for wanting to get paid.

He’s still one of my favorite players. I don’t get to games much because I live in the hinterlands. I got the chance to watch him pitch a gem of a game against the Dbacks when they were at the dome a few years back. Other than watching the Twins beat the ChiSox at the Cell in 14 innings, it was my favorite (live) game watched. I still enjoy watching him pitch (even though he’s wearing the wrong jersey colors) and hope he just needs a few more days to stretch it out.

by GACTwinFan on Mar 1, 2009 12:48 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Santana was one of my Favorite Twins pitcher’s all time and he is still one of my favorite pitchers i hope he is ok and can have a good season for the Mets hey how about Twins and the Mets in the WS Twins win in seaven games

Danoo

by Danoo on Mar 2, 2009 10:55 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Just like Guidry. Or maybe Spahn. Or Koufax.

It’s easy to find a “comp,” as some people like to call it, for Santana, although players’ careers mirror each other because of coincidence more than anything else.

With that caveat, Santana and Ron Guidry are both smallish lefties, and although I know of no study on the careers of smallish lefties Santana has a lot more big-league mileage on his arm than Guidry did at the same age, and Guidry was done after about 2,400 innings. Santana is about 800 short of that.

So that would be pretty definitive if it weren’t for smallish lefty Warren Spahn, who pitched more than twice as many innings as Guidry. Of course, Spahn missed three years to World War II in his early 20s, and although he pitched some in the military it wasn’t like pitching in the big leagues.

How that break to fight the war — not to mention the fact this is an entirely different, coddle-the-pitcher era – fits into Spahn’s longevity is anyone guess.

Then there’s Sandy Koufax, another smallish lefty, although he was listed at 6-2, that might have been stretching it. Of course, he had arthritis. Of course, Santana might develop arthritis.

And of course Koufax averaged 300 innings over the final four years of his career. There are starters today who need about 7 seasons to match that workload, and Santana will never approach that unless he makes all his regular-season starts and the Mets go deep into the post-season, in which case he could become John Smoltz in 1996 (29 wins, more than 290 innings.)

But probably not.

And Santana had modern medicine on his side, so they might be able to grow him a new arm in a year or two.

If they can not grow him a new limb (when they can, this steroid thing will certainly seem insignificant) we can be close to certain that Santana’s career will fall somewhere between that of Guidry and that of Spahn. I’m betting on Guidry.

Bloggin' the bloggers since 1938.

by Johnny Safron on Mar 2, 2009 11:30 AM EST reply actions 0 recs