Santana Picks Up Some Ks
On the surface, Johan Santana has had a solid season, putting up a 3.06 ERA supported by a 3.47 FIP and a 3.75 tERA. However, that masks a miniscule HR/FB rate of 4.6% and an xFIP of 4.53. If his HR/FB were to return to its normal levels – around 9% – Santana’s new inability to miss bats would likely be exposed. His swinging strike rate, never below 11% since 2002, has dropped to 8.9%, dangerously close to average for such a previously dominant pitcher as Santana. Unsurprisingly, his strikeout rate has dropped in tandem from 7.9 to 6.2, resulting in the higher xFIP.
Santana looked more like the Johan of old today against the Colorado Rockies, racking up 10 strikeouts against only two walks in a complete game shutout against one of the better offensive clubs in the National League. It was Johan’s old standby, the changeup, which made fools out of Rockies hitters. Santana pulled the string 40 times on opposing batters today, with 30 of them going for strikes. Rockies batters swung and missed a whopping 11 times, a 27.5% rate. That’s nearly double the 14.3 whiff (misses per pitch thrown) rate on Santana’s changeup this season to date.
Santana’s fastball didn’t show any more life, mixing around 86-90 mph and only drawing one swinging strike in 27 pitches. That’s right, Santana threw 13 more changeups than fastballs in this outing, a striking deviation from his average distribution of 58% fastballs to 27% changeups, with the remaining portion fitting in as sliders. It’s possible that a key to continued success for Santana will be a steady diet of changeups to opposing batters.
For the Mets and their fans, some of whom have compared Santana to the slightly less impressive Jarrod Washburn (and quite aptly, looking at Washburn ’09 vs. Santana ’10 here), this has to be encouraging. The fastball velocity is still down, but the changeup was working its former magic today. For the Mets brass in particular, who will pay Santana at least $77.5 million through 2014, this start has to bring some smiles.
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I’m sorry to be a stickler, but “it’s” always standards for “it is.” Meaning you should have used “its”.
FanGraphs Grammar Patrol, Signing Off.
Lol. Always standards for?
Thank you, that’s without question my biggest pet peeve grammatical error.
IT’S fixed.
Could be Jamie Moyer in two years.
Very nice sign. He is coming back from surgery.
27 k’s in his last 3 starts too. Hopefully it’s not just a fluke to pull mets fans back in before crushing our spirits. Like David Wrights hot streak was.
No, I am waiting for 3-10 against the Astros (7), Pirates (3) and marlins (3) over the next couple of weeks to crush my spirits.
Signed,
K-Rod’s Father-in-law
WFAN’s Boomer and Carton morning show:
Craig Carton: If you’re a senior citizen going to Citi Field today, be careful because K-Rod might punch you in the face.
Caller: Nah, I wouldn’t worry about it Craig, the Mets haven’t beaten people on back-to-back days since June
that kind of approach might work against a young, impatient team like the Rockies, but i doubt Santana will post consistently dominant numbers as a junk baller.
The Rox are not all that young & have some real good hitters. JS is not a junkballer. He was nowhere near 86 while facing the Braves recently. He was in the 90’s
But he’s right about their impatience. James McDonald looked like Cy Young against them last week, thanks mostly to their chasing his (very good) change. But the Padres laid off that change and were much more effective against him. “Impatient” may be too strong, but susceptible to the change is certainly not.
I don’t think the surgery is the cause of Santana’s decreased velocity; it has been going down for several years now. (before the surgery)
Not only has Santana’s velocity been down on his fastball, but so had Maine’s, and so has Perez’s and Pelfrey’s. So maybe it’s more the coaching than the actual players?
It could also be fatigue in the form of accumulation. It’s August. I wouldn’t necessarily expect pitchers to be throwing as hard now as they were in May.
As for coaching someone to throw a couple mph slower would be very difficult. Actually doing so, intentionally, as a pitcher would be incredibly difficult. I’m sure some ML pitchers can do it (such as Hershieser who claims to have 3 different speeds for his pitches, or David Cone who never threw the same pitch twice. *grin*), but it would be rare.
wasnt santana tipping off his change earlier in the season ? maybe could be posting even better #s at this point
Yes he was tipping it off, and not only that, but he changed his windup so that he wouldn’t tip them off, so both could have an effect.
His change-up was very effective recently, and the thing that stood out to me is that he wasn’t throwing it in the zone, and batters were chasing it wildly.
It’s either that deceiving (like it once was) or hitters (or at least hitters of that specific team) were being very undisciplined.
Looking at his pitch stats, the big difference from ’10 and ’09 is the usage of the 2-seamer. He’s throwing his slider less, and change-up more. His slider has a (slight) positive value for the 1st time in 3 years, which might mean something, and it might just be variance.
One of my dreams of pitch-fx data is that it will demonstrate that location and movement are much more important than velocity (assuming the ML velocity range), and pitchers will start being taught to focus on both, instead of just all of the emphasis in HS and NCAA being on velocity and scouts that just sign kids that hit a certain number on the gun.
I watched the game and the idea that he threw 27 fastballs is ridiculous. If he threw 40 changeups which seems accurate he threw no more then 10-12 sliders and the rest were fastballs. And he was very consistent with his velocity at 90mph.