Flashback to January 29th, 2008 when the Twins agreed to trade Johan Santana to the Mets for minor leaguers, Phil Humber and Carlos Gomez among them. Jump back to the present and the Twins find themselves tied for the the division lead and half-a-game behind the Red Sox for the Wild Card. A quick check to Fangraphs shows Johan has contributed almost 3 context-neutral wins for the Mets this year. That's three wins that could belong to the Twins right now, putting them into first place. Of course you also must factor in Gomez' (negative) contribution to the Twins this year; he has netted minus 2 context-neutral wins. Then you have to consider, who would be playing center-field for the Twins right now if Gomez wasn't? Perhaps that player would have contributed minus 5 context-neutral wins, making Gomez a three win upgrade. We cannot determine those hypotheticals, including who would not be pitching for the Twins right now if Johan was? For this reason, I'll stick to a rough estimate and say this trade has cost the Twins 2-4 Wins this year. That is a lot when you consider how close the standings are right now.

In retrospect, do I think the Twins wish they could have this trade back? Ehhrrrmmm.... ehhhhh....hmmmmm.... possibly. In the playoffs anything can happen and I believe a team should never trade away its chances at a playoff birth for the future. Of course, the Twins probably never expected they would be in this situation come the end of August, so their process was definitely correct. Looking beyond this season and even the next, I believe this trade will help them long-term. That is not a compliment for any of the players the Twins received in the trade, rather a shot a Johan Santana.

Peripherals, stats like H/BF, K/BF, and BB/BF(BF = Batters Faced), show possible change in a pitcher's skills, sometimes even before his ERA shows it. Let's take a look Johan's peripheral stats over the last few years:

There is no column on this chart that is promising. Even though because the baseline is Batters Faced instead of the more commonly used Innings Pitched you have no context (I'll give context in a future article) on which to go from, it is apparent that everything is going in the wrong direction. Santana is giving up more Hits per Batter, more Walks per Batter, and striking out batters at a slower rate. His Walks + Hits per Batters Faced, which is the same concept as WHIP except with Batter's faced, steadily rose every year. And lastly Santana is having to face more batter's per IP than ever before, certainly not a way to lower your pitch count. One would think Santana's ERA (don't worry I'm not going to use ER/BF) would have risen a considerable amount since he Cy Young seasons of 04 and 06.


Actually, it turns out Johan's ERA is the lowest it has been since 2004. Although as indicated by his xFIP, clearly Santana's ERA should have been rising over the last two years. With the exception of 2007, it hasn't.

There are two explanations of how Santana has kept his ERA down despite his peripheral stats worsening. The first is an increased LOB%, or Strand Rate.

As the story has gone so far, the expected Left On Base Percentage says there should have been a decrease in effectiveness, meanwhile Santana's actual numbers remain stubborn, slowly widening the gap between expected and actual. Santana's "actual numbers" are about to learn that "expected numbers" do not compromise, do not bend, rather they force the "actual numbers" to follow them and follow they will.

Johan struggled mightily in 2007 to prevent flyballs and prevent flyballs from going over the fence. This dangerous combination caused Santana to give up 33 Home Runs on the year, third most in the Majors. This year both Santana's FB% and HR/FB% are down, meaning Santana is giving up significantly less Home Runs (twentieth in HRs allowed) and therefore runs.

The whole reason Santana had to be traded was because Johan is in his 5th season of service and therefore will become a free agent come the off season. The Twins reported offered him an extension, which he turned down and wisely too since he is getting much more money from the Mets now. However let's say Santana did not accept the extension and also did not get traded at the deadline, meaning he'd be free to become a free agent in the off season. He would remind of one player in particular, the only other pitcher with a contract worth more than 125 Mill, Barry Zito.

Barry Zito is another pitcher whose prime came well before his free-agent years (assuming Santana's does). I am going to put some graphs of Zito's and Santana's peripheral stats transposed on top of each other. Santana's 5-year window will remain from 2004-08 and Zito's will be from 2002-06, the equivalent years in his career.



Besides showing how ridiculously better a pitcher Santana is than Zito, these graphs show the similarities between Zito and Santana as they progressed in their careers. Both graphs follow the same basic trend, yes?. Do I think Santana will regress significantly in the next 2-3 years? Yes. Zito became a 4.50-5.00 ERA pitcher. Santana, clearly superior, should fall back to the 3.50-4.00 range. Hey, I'm not saying the guy is gonna crumble, he is just going to become slightly above-average. Is that worth 137.5 Million? The answer is Yes if the Mets win the World Series this year. If not, then Santana's contract will become one of the many others that are laughed at when a player is getting paid prime money when he's past his prime.

Yes, Santana is past his prime Mets fans, get over it. It is possible, unlikely, but possible that Johan will be able to reinvent himself in a Mussina-like fashion 3-4 years from now. PITCHf/x data will be required to view that transformation and if you would like to get a great PITCHf/x outlook on Santana, Derek Carty over at The Hardball Times did just that only a few days ago.