This is a series of evaluations that will be done this offseason on every player that closed the season on the 40-man roster for the Minnesota Twins, with one appearing every weekday from now until each player has been evaluated. The plan is to start with Mr. Albers and move all the way through the pitchers, then to the catchers, infielders, outfielders and finally those listed as designated hitters on the club’s official MLB.com roster. That means we’ll wrap it up with Miguel Sano sometime in the first week of December.
- Name: Ervin Santana
- 2016 Role: Unquestionably the team’s best starter all season long.
- Expected 2017 Role: Opening Day starter, assuming he isn’t traded.
- MLB Stats: 3.38 ERA (3.81 FIP) in 181.1 IP, 7.4 K/9, 2.6 BB/9, 42.6 percent GB rate, 1.22 WHIP, 3.2 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: N/A
- Contract Status: Signed through 2018 at $13.5 million per season with a $14 million team option for 2019 — his age-36 season.
2016 Lowdown:
Santana’s first season with the Twins didn’t get off on the finest of starts, as he was suspended 80 games on the eve of the 2015 opener. With the Twins just barely missing the playoffs and even if they had made it not being able to use Santana, there was some justifiable consternation among the team’s faithful regarding how the richest contract the team had ever handed out to a free agent had started. Santana started strong in 2015 once he was finally able to pitch, sagged in August (7.11 ERA) and finished with a flourish in September (1.88 ERA) as the Twins missed the postseason by three games.
It’s worth wondering what the Twins’ end-of-season record would have looked like if they’d have been able to use Santana all season long and kept Trevor May in the rotation at the expense of Mike Pelfrey. But that’s water under the bridge; that ship has sailed.
The Twins slunk back into the depths and then some from their pre-Santana days in 2016, but none of those struggles can be attributed to Big Erv. Like the team, Santana got off to a slow start this season. By mid-June, Santana had made 12 starts with a 5.10 ERA. He’d allowed 10 home runs in just 65.1 innings and had a 49-21 K/BB ratio. But from that point on is when Santana really turned things up. Over his final 18 starts of the season, Santana clocked in with a 2.41 ERA, .589 OPS against and a K/BB ratio of 100-32 over 116 innings. He allowed just nine home runs over that stretch and in general looked like a pitcher that was part of the fix rather than part of the problem.
The problem, that is, is that the Twins rotation was dead last in baseball in ERA. And while Santana seems to be a part of the fix, that does ignore the elephant in the room. Santana turns 34 in a couple weeks. There are over 2,000 innings in his right arm — one that has thrown countless sliders over his 12-year MLB career. That’s a high-torque pitch that can send pitchers scurrying to the trainer’s room quickly with little-to-no warning. Of course, Santana has been lucky. Or at the very least, he’s been durable. We still haven’t deduced what is the magic elixir that keeps pitchers healthy. The ones that do say it’s throwing a lot. The one’s that don’t say it’s throwing too much. As of right now, we don’t have a really good answer as to what makes a pitcher stay healthy or get hurt. Clayton Kershaw was the beacon of staying healthy until this year, when a back injury of all things laid him up and put him on the DL for multiple months.
With that said, the time will never be better for the Twins to move Santana. He’s got some miles on him. He’s pitched very well in recent years. In fact, since his last ugly season — a 5.16 ERA that’s not five seasons ago — he’s put together a nearly 700-inning, four-year stretch with a 3.59 ERA (3.79 FIP) with good rates across the board. In an extremely lean pitching market this offseason, it makes sense to dangle Santana out there with two years and at least $28 million left on his deal. If he stays healthy, that two years becomes three at $41 million — a sum he’d easily clear if he were to be magically whisked onto the free-agent market at this point.
Basically, the point is this: Santana shows no signs of slowing down, but with pitchers sometimes the first sign is the last sign.
An inferior pitcher in Edinson Volquez just signed for two years and $21 million with the Miami Marlins. Volquez is basically Kyle Gibson 2.o with a little less of a penchant for home runs. The Twins got a little — not a lot, but some — grief for their deal with Santana, but it’s panned out not only better than the Ricky Nolasco one a year before it, but flat out just well on its own merits.
After missing the first 100 games of the 2015 season, Santana has come back to show his arm has plenty of juice left. PITCHf/x has him reaching 96.6 mph with his four-seam fastball in each of the last two years while sitting at 92-93 mph — some of the best velocity he’s ever shown while pitching in the era where this stuff is readily tracked. He relied on the slider heavily in 2016 — throwing it 1,145 times to 1,522 on his four-seamer — and it loved him back with a 17 percent whiff rate. That’s roughly in line with the 17.2 percent rate he put together in his abbreviated 2015 and not far off the 18.1 percent mark from his career.
Basically, the point is this: Santana shows no signs of slowing down, but with pitchers sometimes the first sign is the last sign. That’s perhaps doubly true with pitchers over 30 — and Santana isn’t just barely over that marker, either. Don’t be fooled by the people who say Santana has nothing to offer the Twins over the next two years. First of all, I believe the Twins will be markedly better in 2017 — more on that in a later column — but also I think his presence isn’t only measured on how he pitches on the mound. He can do things in the clubhouse to make Jose Berrios more comfortable in his own skin moving forward, and that alone has plenty of value.
But with that said, the time will never be better to move Santana. Right now, the 2017-18 free agent list for pitchers looks like Jake Arrieta, Alex Cobb, Johnny Cueto, Yu Darvish, Danny Duffy, Jaime Garcia, Masahiro Tanaka and a bunch of wildcards like Francisco Liriano, Lance Lynn, Tyson Ross and others.
You had better believe that Derek Falvey and Thad Levine are keenly aware of this.
Grade: A-. Only nine qualified AL starters had a higher fWAR than Santana this year. He can be docked a little bit for a tough start but ultimately it was a very, very good season for the 33-year-old righty.
