Ervin Santana's Keeper Potential?

[Andy1234]

I have never seen him pitch or read alot about him, I was wondering, how good is this kid? How good will he be? Do you see him being a top 5-10 fantasy pitcher consistantly in the future? If not where do you see him?

I don't have any comments, Just looking for some opinions.

[johnsamo]

He's 24 and already consistenly throwing like a vet. Most guys his age are very hit and miss. He doesn't have Santana Verlander type stuff, but as a manager, you can pretty much pencil in 6 to 7 inings and 2 to 3 runs given up in his starts. A few days a little better than that, a few a little worse. IN short, a perfect #2 guy. There isn't a team in the league who wouldn't want that. And since he's 24, he's likely to get better. He has good pitches, changes things up, and hits his locations. And he's not an ego guy looking to blow you away and make the ESPN highlight show, if he can, he'd rather get a lot of ground ball outs and have low pitch innings. Kind of boring really, but 8 pitch 3 up 3 down innings are not uncommon for him when he's dealing. When he gets into trouble, he turns it up a bit and gets more Ks to get out of jams.

[johnsamo]

Anyway, no he's probably not going to win a cy-young winner, but he'll be one of those guys where he can quietly win 20 on a good team. To me, the only real question is, because he's so young, is there more cieling we haven't seen yet? With experience, cutting his walk rate and getting even better with his location, he could be a Maddux type guy. But that's hard to say.

[stikmata]

pretty good analysis there

i personally wouldn't keep him... he's one of those guys, where if i had him in a roto league, i'd bench him for every away start and home starts against strong offenses... he may reach top the bottom of the 10 ten in the AL... but i think that's his apex