No player on the Twins sparks more discussion among its fans than Johan Santana. The reason is simple, Johan is far and away the most effective pitcher on the team. He strikes out batters at an incredible rate, and is still just 24 years old. The quandry, however, is what role he should play.
The Twins Geek has just run a three-part series looking at the benefits of having Santana in either the bullpen or the starting rotation. While he did not make a definite conclusion, he did prove in Part Three that Santana is clearly not being used in very optimal situations for his skill level because nearly every game he has entered in relief has been a blowout.
In my opinion, Johan needs to be in the starting rotation. Just looking at the totals of his three starts this year (18 innings, 9 hits, 2 runs) one can see how truly dominant he can be. However, not only do I want to have him start in order to maximize the number of innings in which he will pitch, but I also believe that he needs the extra innings in order to smooth out his sometimes shaky control. Unfortunately, the one small blemish in Johan's skill set is his control as he still walks to many batters for my liking (this year he is walking a very respectible 3.4/9 innings after walking 4.1/9 last season). When he is in the bullpen, Gardenhire will occassionally bring him into a game solely to face on difficult lefthanded batter and place him in the position in which I find him least likely to succeed. While he is tough on lefties, he simply has too much "stuff" to be wasted in just a one batter role.
This reminds me of my biggest complaint of Gardenhire - there are certain days when he seemingly loses his mind and becomes Tony LaRussa. By this I mean, he will make three or four pitching changes in just one inning in order to "play the percentages". I wish I could just explain to him that if he has a pitcher who is pitching effectively, then he should leave him in because the more pitchers he uses, the more likely one of them will be ineffective. The worst examples of this type of managing occurred in the last couple of games of last season's American League Championship Series as he kept bringing in ineffective pitchers (end of rant).
For those of you looking for more information and thought about Johan, I highly recommend visiting Aaron's Baseball Blog. Johan is the official pitcher of Aaron's website, and he is usually discussed at least once a week.
Finally, the nickname "Sweet Music" of course already exists in Twins history as Frank Viola won a Cy Young Award and World Series after earning the moniker. While it is lacking in creativity, Johan is the best lefthanded pitcher to play for the Twins since Frankie V, he is left-handed like Frankie V, and, of course, Santana is known for his sweet music.
Updated July 12, 2003
Santana started last night's game - his first performance as a full-time member of the starting rotation. Not surprisingly, he pitched six good innings and allowed three earned runs (sadly it still counts as an earned run when both The Rebel and The Lettuce give up on a pop-up and play in into a RBI double). Joe Mays has been mind-bogglingly ineffective lately and was forced out of the rotation in favor of Johan when sanity finally entered Gardenhire's desicion-making process.
Updated September 12, 2003
So, I think we can agree that Johan belongs in the rotation. He has been phenomenal in the second half of the season, and has easily become the Twins ace and (dare I say it?) Cy Future.
