Santana Gets Shelled

By Mike

What are you smiling about, Johan Santana?

Over the past seven years, Johan Santana has been reguarded as the most dominant pitcher in baseball posting ERA of about 2.7 during that span and over 200 strikeouts per season. But his luck has quickly changed. Heading into Sunday's self-destruction against the Yankees, Santana had a 5.54 ERA over his previous two games, and it is getting progressively worse. This is Santana's career worst stat line in the 16-0 shutout loss: 3.0 IP, 9 H, 9 ER, 2 BB, 3 K; at least he had a 9.0 K per 9 average.

Johan Santana has not been able to locate his pitches like he used to. He can no longer throw to the outside part of the plate against lefties, and as a result they are sitting for the inside fastball and knocking it out of the park (he allowed 4 homeruns against the Phillies). Lefties are also hitting above .300 against him in his last few starts. Even more alarming for Santana is that his fastball velocity is down about 3 MPH from last year. This is extremely alarming to me, and unfortunately might indicate that Tommy John's surgery is inevitable. This decrease in fastball speed also makes his nasty changeup more hittable, because the difference in velocities is a lot smaller.

If Johan Santana doesn't start to get his things together, then he certainly won't be in the running for the National League Cy Young this year, and the already struggling Mets will most likely drop out of the playoff race; if all of the Mets starters are healthy, their rotation is subpar, but it doesn't help that two of them are injured.

If Santana does not start to pitch well, then you might have to consider a back-up plan. The most reasonable pickups at this point in the season are:

1.) John Smoltz - if he is able to achieve a slight amount of the success that he used to, he should be a great addition especially with the run support in Boston.
2.) Aaron Cook - the Rockies are finally starting to hit the ball, which means more run support. Cook has always been a somewhat reliable sinker-baller and he should continue to do so.
3.) Joe Blanton - after nearly 5 quality starts in a row, maybe Blanton is returning to his old-Oakland Athletic form?

Fantasy Forecast: 189 IP, 15 W, 9 L, 191 K, 3.15 ERA, 1.19 WHIP