Do You Remember How Awesome Johan Santana Was (In 2004)?
I’m going to try to do these more often. I’ve already profiled Frank Thomas and Randy Johnson, but today I’m going to come more into recent history, focusing tonight on Johan Santana’s superb 2004 season.
This was Johan’s Leap. This is the season Johan Santana firmly stepped into the upper echelon of pitchers, and he stayed there for the rest of the decade.
I’m sure you remember the stats, but here they are anyway. Santana threw 228 innings, with an ERA+ of 188, 265 strikeouts, and an absurd 54 walks (a paltry 4.91 K to BB ratio).
Further more, Santana led the AL or baseball entirely in the following:
Strikeouts
ERA
ERA+
WHIP
Hits per 9
Strikeouts per 9
The writers, bless their souls, gave him an unanimous Cy Young Award, and in retrospect, well, they were right. No one in the AL was close.
What else can be said? Well, Santana’s second-half was ridiculous, and if he’d played in New York (his whole career, not just the last two seasons) his second-half performances would be things of legend. Super Johan tended to be unreal after the All-Star Break.
2004 was no exception. From July 11th that season until the end, Santana threw 112 innings to a 1.28 ERA. He sat down 140 helpless souls and walked only 25. He was mind-blowing.
If you tack on his two excellent postseason starts against the 101-win New York Yankees (12 innings, 0.75 ERA, 12 strikeouts) it makes it even more obvious.
Johan Santana was pretty damn awesome in 2004. However, I’ve got more.
Santana always struck me as more finesse than power. That’s not a bad thing–Greg Maddux was a finesse pitcher too. But without a super fastball, how did Santana strike out such a high amount of batters?
First off, I don’t know if anyone this side of Curt Schilling had better command than peak-Johan, in particular the command of his dynamite changeup. His ability to set up batters and then unleash the nasty change with exactly the same arm-motion is what made him truly excellent.
There’s virtually zero change in arm speed or slot from fastball to changeup with Santana. There was no tell. Hitters were reduced to guessing, and evidently they failed. Miserably.
His reign of dominance continued basically until 2009, when some injuries coupled with pitching in front of a team roughly as good as the Little Leaguers down the road made it a rough go for Super Johan.
The future is a bit cloudy for Santana coming off some elbow problems, but there’s no doubt his 2004 season was awesome.
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