Johan Santana: A look at what might have been
By Jake Misener
Once upon a time, left-hander Johan Santana was the best pitcher in all of Major League Baseball. It seems like that was so long ago. And, in truth, it was.
The former American League Cy Young Award winner is now 35 years old and heading into his age-36 season. Currently, he lacks a team to call home for the 2015 campaign, but he hopes to change that soon. The southpaw is slated to make a Venezuela Winter League start later this month, and, as reports indicate, despite his missing all of last season, the Baltimore Orioles remain interested in bringing Santana back on a new deal.
A full decade ago, Santana was coming off the first of his two Cy Young-winning seasons with the Minnesota Twins. In 2004, the then-25-year-old won 20 games for the first–and only–time in his career, losing just six times and posting a sterling 2.61 earned run average across 228 innings of work.
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He followed that up with his first All-Star selection and a third-place finish in the voting in 2005, when he delivered a 2.87 ERA in 231 2/3 innings of work. He was one of only a handful of pitchers in all of baseball who combined a heavy workload with such impressive results. That trend continued the next season when he led the league in wins, earned run average, starts and innings pitched en route to the aforementioned second AL Cy Young Award of his career.
After one more All-Star caliber campaign in the Twin Cities, Santana joined the New York Mets via trade. Although injuries quickly took center stage, he was nearly as effective as he was in Minnesota. Over the course of four seasons in the Big Apple, Santana’s earned run average (3.18) was actually lower than in his eight seasons with the Twins (3.22)–but again, arm troubles derailed much of his promise.
Last season, working in the Baltimore farm system, Santana was nearing a big league promotion, but after he tore his Achilles, the team lost out on his potential contributions. That being said, he has shown that his shoulder is healthy, which offers some hope in the future for the left-hander.
The odds are, as he heads into his age-36 campaign, that Johan Santana will never again be as dominant as he was a decade ago. However, it would be nice to see him work his way back to the big leagues before riding off into the sunset with his two Cy Young Awards, five All-Star selections and a lone Gold Glove Award.
Ah, what might have been.