Whither Johan Santana?

Before all you fantasy owners who went out and wasted a first round pick on Johan Santana get all nervous and in a tizzy, remember, it is still early and he has at least 33 more starts to go if he is healthy. But Johan Santana has sure not looked like the Cy Young winning pitcher of 2004 and the should-have-won-the-Cy-over-that-pig-Bartolo-Colon-pitcher of 2005. In fact he has not even looked close.

Santana has lost both of his first two decisions. This much most of us will have realized by now. But we should acknowledge that a loss isn't always necessarily a pitcher's fault, in fact it is often not [Exhibit A: Tom Glavine]. But there are more disturbing numbers below the surface on these losses that might be a cause for concern if they continue. Santana's ERA for the first game was 6.35, which is fine if you're... well scratch that that just isn't a good ERA in any league or at any level. Thankfully in his second start Santana improved, though not by much, he posted a 5.06 ERA. We can say this, at least he is headed in the right direction, but our expectations were to have a Santana ERA closer to one than to seven, and that hasn't happened yet either.

Beyond those ERAs, which some people might chalk up to fluky play or exceptionally mean official scorers we can look at some other stats over those two starts. Santana threw 98 and 100 pitches in each of his games, which is about what managers and pitching coaches are limiting their pitchers to these days. But when he reached these counts is more of a concern. He wasn't pitching into the 7th and 8th inning, and actually hasn't even finished the 6th yet, yikes! His innings pitched have been 5.1 and 5.2 respectively. Santana has also given up a home run in each of his outings, which is okay as long as he doesn't give one up in his next two, then there is serious cause for concern. The other really frightening numbers, I'm talking Albert Pujols at the plate with the winning run on second -frightening, are his batting average against and OPS against. Facing lefties Santana has been respectable though not stellar with a .250 BA and .690 OPS against. But righties seem to have Santana figured out batting .324 agaisnt him with a .910 OPS. To put that in perspective righties are making a collective early run at the MVP when batting against Santana.

The two encouraging things to report are that Santana allowed only four hits in his second start, and hasn't been walking many people. Also these outings were against Toronto and Cleveland, which, though not the strongest, are not the weakest lineups in the league. Here's hoping JoSa gets better real soon.