By Ed Thoma
Free Press Staff Writer
MANKATO —
I think of it as the Robin Roberts Rule: Every major league pitcher eventually encounters a time when his talent has eroded enough that he has to find a new way to get hitters out.
Johan Santana appears be at that point now.
Roberts — who died earlier this year — was a great pitcher in the 1950s who won 20-plus games six years in a row for the Phillies, throwing more than 300 innings every year. He did it with an outstanding fastball, throwing it high in the strike zone and getting fly ball outs by the bushel.
He wound up with 286 wins. He didn’t get to 300 because he wouldn’t or couldn’t adjust when the fastball began to wilt.
There are other greats who made the changes they had to. Tom Glavine spent years living on the outside corner (and even further out); he learned to work inside to set up his preferred location. Roger Clemens added a split-fingered fastball. Even Nolan Ryan changed — his walk rates fell from nearly six per nine innings to 3.5.
Santana’s erosion is evident in the stats.
He’s still an effective pitcher. Even after Saturday’s loss to the Twins, his ERA is 3.55.
But he ain’t what he used to be, and that is most obvious in his leading indicator stats — his strikeout rate and his walk/strikeout ratios.
In his glory days with the Twins — when he won two Cy Youngs and deserved a third — Santana struck out more than a batter an inning. That dropped to less than eight Ks per nine innings in his first two season with the Mets, and this year it's under six. At his peak, Santana walked one man for every five he struck out; this year, it’s one walk for every two strikeouts.
These aren’t terrible ratios. He’s not pitching his way out of the league. But they’re worse than those of four of the five Twins starters (the exception being Nick Blackburn), and they’re going in the wrong direction.
His fastball velocity is down — he threw 93-94 with the Twins, but now is in the uppers 80s. He doesn’t use his breaking ball nearly as often as he once did.
And the problems with those pitches have made his vaunted changeup less effective. Stories in the Minnesota and New York papers of Saturday’s outing noted that the Twins swung at only two changes in their four-run first inning — a sign that they were identifying the pitch early.
There are ways around this:
n After the first inning Saturday, he started throwing more breaking balls. That helped make the change more effective. (He allowed just one run in his next five innings.)
n Santana said last week that he’s still recovering from last year’s elbow surgery. The implication: He may yet regain some of the missing velocity on the fastball.
n The Mike Mussina solution: When Mussina came to grips with his declining velocity, he found a way to slow his changeup as well.
A vexing reality: Just because the fast ball is slower doesn’t mean the changeup is slower. Santana has gone from a 16-mph difference between fastball and change to a 10-mph difference, and that’s the difference between swing-and-miss and a foul ball. If the difference continues to shrink, those foul balls will become line drives.
But if Santana can turn his 78-mph change to 72 mph, the difference is back.
Santana has done the heavy lifting for the Hall of Fame. Now he has to meet the challenge of the Robin Roberts Rule. He’s intelligent enough to do so.
Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com
