Johan Santana

[trevisc]

I love Santana but he is starting to fall into that old addage "he is so underrated that he is overrated".

The hype around him is building. I get off the bandwagon at round 6. No make that 5 (maybe 4).

exactly!

me too..

it's like..ok..here we are in the 4th..will he last to the 5th? Here we are in the 5th..will he last to the 6th

[Guest]

you have to remember that the guy has never really started a whole season in his career, so while he does know how to get hitters out, he will be throwing a lot more innins this year than he ever has before, and its not like the twins have the best lineup especially after getting rid of pierzynski, mauer is star of the future, but he is not going to be a stud for at least another year, so they dont really have any great hitters on their team, no run support=less wins, which isnt good for a guy you want to select in the 3rd or 4th round, i think he has top 10 stuff, he is a year away from that though, and even then he might not be because of the hitters ballpark he plays in with the weak offense

[trevisc]

you have to remember that the guy has never really started a whole season in his career, so while he does know how to get hitters out, he will be throwing a lot more innins this year than he ever has before, and its not like the twins have the best lineup especially after getting rid of pierzynski, mauer is star of the future, but he is not going to be a stud for at least another year, so they dont really have any great hitters on their team, no run support=less wins, which isnt good for a guy you want to select in the 3rd or 4th round, i think he has top 10 stuff, he is a year away from that though, and even then he might not be because of the hitters ballpark he plays in with the weak offense

and where did Prior go in last year's draft?
i'm sure it was the top 3-4 rounds

[baseball genius]

I like Santana's potential but I think you are putting very high expectations on him. He has been a reliever his entire career and its not such an easy transition to go from reliever to starter. He knows how to strike out hitters but I'm not sold on his ability to get a hitter to ground out or fly out, and as a starting pitcher that is essential. The Twins managment better have him on a tight pitch count because if they overwork him he will get hurt. I have seen him go as early as the fourth round but I would take him in the fifth. I believe he will be about 13-9, 3.75era, 225k's. A good pitcher but not top ten.

[trevisc]

any pitcher that gets 225ks and a sub 4.00 is worthy of a top 10!

[NZF]

Santana has the stuff to be Top 10 but until he has pitched a full year in the Twins starting rotation he remains a question mark.

He should not be taken before the 6th round but I'm sure he will and he may even be taken as high as the 3rd by some.

A word of caution. He very rarely went past the 6th innings even when he made the rotation last season. In his 17 games after he made the rotation he got through the 7th innings only 4 times.

Because he strikes out so many batters his pitch count gets high very early. You will not see him throw many more than 100 pitches in an outing this season as the Twins will try to keep his workload to a minimum with 200 innings likely. Also the Twins bullpen will be drastically weakened without Hawkins and Guardado closing out the 8th and 9th. Expect far fewer wins as a result for Santana and the TWINS.

I see more a 12-11 with a 3.90 ERA and 190K's.

[Sticky Spice]

Great point about the bullpen...

It's funny, I think all the hardcore Rotogeeks out there have hyped this guy soooo much that he might be overvalued. This is almost one of those instances where the ignorant might have an advantage.

I'm a little hot n bothered over Johan too.

You ever look at like PJ and remember back to when he was with the Expos and there was just this feeling of if he could take it up a notch he would be awesome. I get that feeling a little with Johan, but it may still be a year too early to go that far with it. Still in a keeper league you gotta look at what he's gonna look like a year from now which is pretty darn good.

I would bring up that Oliver Perez looks like he's developing similarly to Randy Johnson but that's a whole other can o' worms