The Santana Formerly Known as Johan

4th on the oh-eight list....
Not the Santana you expected find here. Even today, straight odds bet, which Santana would you peg to have more K’s in 2009? I’d probably take yo-jan too. [What’s really crazy is that Ervin’s name was Johan but he changed it in 2003 because the then Twin’s ace was already famous]

Anyhow, to continue with my general theme of just taking what I find on FanGraphs and putting it into text and passing it off as insight, I think Santana’s 2009 is fascinating. This time the pitch type mining is telling, or at least bears repeating on a second site.

Remember what I said about AJ? Dished the change, just throw the heat and the deuce? So Santana’s go to breaking pitch has been deemed a slider by the pitch tracking algorithm of Baseball Info Solutions, but the story is pretty similar, but way more exaggerated in the case of The Shaker.

For the last 4 years, Flatbrim Santana has thrown his fastball 61.7, 60.9, 61.9 and 61.4 percent of the time (2005-08). Nothing changed there. The velocity of his fastball in those four years went 93.4, 93.1, 92.2, 94.4. So he had a fastball, lost a tick, then last year it came back stronger. Kinda cool. His velocity correlates with his ERA, but not his K rate, which actually went up a little in ’07 before jumping a whole bunch in ‘08.
Now, off-speed stuff.
Change up: 10% 9.6% 5.5% 3.9% (tumble, tumble, tumble)
Curve ball: 6.3% 8.5% 8.7% 0.8% ( la-di-da plummet)
Slider: 21.7% 21% 24.4% 33.9% (slider use jumps in 2008)
So, do you think throwing the slider more is a good thing for Senior Flatbrim? And maybe that change-up and curve just aren’t all they’re chalked up to be…

Fun with excel:
Do you see in that second graph? The correlation between Sanatana’s yearly strikeout rate (K / batters faced) and yearly percentage of pitches which were sliders? R2 of 0.9995? I ain’t no math magician and I know there’s only 4 values for 4 years of data, but…well, you can decide if you think it’s just random or not. I guess if he gets in more strikeout counts he uses the pitch more, so to be objective I admit this could be effect or getting to good counts with the fastball, not because the amount of sliders matters, but screw that.

The last thing I did was watch some MLB.com highlight reels. There are punch outs with both the fastball and the slider, but more often with the slider and more often swining. Interesting in 2009 will be if Sanatana maintains this two pitch style, and if his limited repertoire catches up. Will batters lay of the sliders in the dirt the more they realize that’s his MO? Will scouting reports circulate to reduce his effectiveness? Certainly he maintained his effectiveness throughout 2008 but a little regression may be in order after such a sudden breakout.