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What's Wrong With Johan?

In Newsday today, Ken Davidoff writes about Johan Santana's disappointing first three months as a Met:

The boxscore line looks presentable. It usually does. Shoot, the way Johan Santana began Saturday's game, we thought we might get a run at Tom Seaver's and David Cone's team record of 19 strikeouts in a game.

Yet once again, if you stood on the Mets' side of the aisle Saturday, baseball's highest-paid pitcher left you wanting more.

*snip*

Santana's 7-7 mark doesn't faze this space; we're all intelligent enough to know that won-loss records can be terribly misleading. No, it's more the sense that Santana isn't what he once was. And that he doesn't, or can't, put the team on his back and carry it the way you would expect from someone of his caliber. Not in actions and not in words.

"It seems like you have to be perfect every time you go out there," he lamented Saturday night after the game. "I know I'm not perfect."

Davidoff's one of the most knowledgeable baseball writers in the city, so definitely go read the rest of his column. As for Santana, his 3.01 ERA is fifth in the NL; his 103 strikeouts are third; his 3.22 K/BB is sixth; OPS against is 15th; WHIP is 11th. You want fancier stats? He's ninth in SNLVAR; eighth in VORP; 12th in FIP. I could go on, but the salient point is that Santana has been very good this season, but he hasn't been great and he certainly hasn't been what we all hoped he would be.

Should we temper our expectations? Almost everyone thought he would make a seamless transition to the National League. He dominated the junior circuit for a half-dozen years, winning two Cy Young awards and consistently finishing among the league's leaders in strikeouts, fewest walks allowed, ERA, etc. It's been hammered into our heads that the American League is the tougher league, and that pitchers switching to the NL can usually expect some bump in production. I generally buy this argument, but of course your mileage may vary and every pitcher is a little bit different. I wasn't expecting Pedro circa 2000; I'd be perfectly happy with Santana circa 2007. We've had neither to this point.

What about the whole first-half/second-half thing? He has generally been a significantly better pitcher after the All-Star break. His ERA (2.79 vs 3.51), K/9 (9.53 vs 9.29), BB/9 (2.46 vs 2.54) and HR/9 (0.89 vs 1.08) are all better in the second half. Last year was actually an exception to this, as his ERA was much higher late in the season (4.04 vs 2.75), though most of that had to do with a surge (bad!) in his homerun rate from 1.26 to 1.47. His walk and strikeout rates remained pretty consistent.

So maybe we can hang our hat on Santana's past second-half success. Or, perhaps just as his homerun rate went up in 2007 and has remained high in 2008, he will be even less impressive after the All-Star break this season than he has been before. I should reiterate that, while Santana hasn't been, for lack of a better descriptive, Santana-esque, he has been plenty good, and has run into a bit of bad luck wins-wise. I'm sure Santana expects better of himself, as we all do. If he pitches this way for the life of his contract it'll be hard to say that the Mets got hosed, but it'll likewise be hard to say that they got what they thought they were getting.

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Slightly off topic, but relevant

Is it just me, or does it seem like Mets pitchers hardly ever get any close strikes called in their favor? Even guys like Pedro, Johan, and Glavine (when he was here), who should be getting borderline strikes because of their rep, don’t seem to get the close calls.

Maybe I’m looking at this through Mets colored glasses, but I can’t even watch Mets-Braves games because I feel like their pitchers, especially Smoltz and Glavine (ironically enough), are pitching to a larger zone than Mets pitchers.

Johan was cruising yesterday when all of a sudden the home plate ump totally squeezed him. I understand you’re not going to get every call, but Johan wasn’t getting anything.

So what is it? Am I wrong here?

by SQUAD on Jun 29, 2008 12:30 PM EDT reply actions  

Something to consider

I was going to put up a post about this. I’ve been thinking a lot about this situation myself. While Johan’s numbers have been very good, it seems like he is in more jams and getting out of fewer. Here is what I came up with.

Johan’s ground ball to fly ball ratio is way up this year (1.33) and his GB% (45%) is significantly above his career average of 38.2%. Usually this would be a good thing. But the Mets infield defense this year has been awful when it comes to fielding ground balls. Castillo ranks last in the NL among qualified second basemen in RZR at only .727. Delgado is 9th in the NL at 1b at .721. And Jose Reyes is 7th in the NL at SS just ahead of Hanley Ramirez at .825. Add to that the fact that Reyes, Castillo, and Delgado have only made 48 outs outside of zone and it becomes clear that getting ground balls is not the best result.

When you look at the Mets infield defense combined with an increase in Johan’s GB% and the increase in his LD%, (21.3% this year compared to a career 19.3%) it’s not surprising that Johan is on pace to allow more than 200 hits for the first time in his career. If he is going to be more dominating in the second half he will either have to pitch for more fly balls or get his K/9 rate up to his career highs.

by Reg Dunlop on Jun 29, 2008 12:53 PM EDT reply actions  

Ridiculous

Johan has been great this year. The ability of this team to only score a small # of runs for him has hampered him all year. Don’t discount the pressure that puts on a pitcher. Also, keep in mind, this is a “second half” guy, and look what he’s done already.

Anyone worried about Johan above our other problems is diseased.

The 2008 NY Mets: Reyes singles. Castillo infield single. Wright walks. Beltran lines out. ZaBlanc bitches. Delgado strikes out. Reyes picked off third. Fans boo. Padres win 2-1.

by ZaBlanc on Jun 29, 2008 10:04 PM EDT reply actions  

Agreed

People are saying “ZOMG HE’S ONLY 7-7” as if that were the definitive way to measure a pitcher’s performance. Give Johan decent run support and he’s probably more like 10-4 at this point and nobody is talking about this at all.

by JoshNY on Jun 30, 2008 10:58 AM EDT up reply actions  

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