Santana Looking to Bounce Back Strong After Tommy John Surgery
After spending three and a half seasons in the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system, Edgar Santana made his Major League debut during the 2017 season. He pitched well, posting a 3.50 ERA in 19 games, and did enough to get back to the roster in 2018. He took the league by storm dropping his ERA nearly thirty points while more than quadrupling his workload at the Major League level. However, the Cinderella story came to a crashing halt as Santana left his appearance on September 21st with an injury that would end his rookie season.
It turned out to be much worse than both the Pirates and Santana thought and would require the left-hander to have right Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL) surgery on March 29th, 2019. The injury would keep him out for the entire 2019 season, and he spent most of the season at Pirate City rehabbing the elbow. He was over 1,000 miles away from his teammates and he admitted that it was hard to sit there and not be able to make an impact on his team. He told the Trib "It was hard. I wanted to watch the games and root for my teammates, but some nights I just couldn't do it. I missed my teammates."
Not only did Santana miss his team, but after his strong rookie season, his teammates definitely missed him. A bullpen that was over worked throughout the season, was missing one of their top pieces from the year before. It was a quick ascent through the Minor league system for Santana making his way to the Big Leagues in just under three seasons. He found success at every level and has continued that success in his short time in a major League uniform.
Santana was signed as an undrafted free agent in October of 2013 and was assigned to the Dominican Summer League Pirates to start the 2014 season. He pitched to a 3.66 ERA during that season in 19.2 innings of work, and showed great control walking just 3 batters. After pitching a year in short season West Virginia, Santana's career was sent into a whirlwind and he jumped from High Class A Bradenton all the way to Triple-A Indianapolis. He pitched to a combined 2.71 ERA that season and proved to be a strong relief option in the minor league system.
2018, saw him put it all together at Triple A and he pitched to a 2.79 ERA in 58 innings of work while striking out 54 and walking just twelve batters. It was his highest volume of work at any level of the Minor Leagues and proved he could get professional hitters out. With his success in tow, Santana would get the call to the Major Leagues on June 10th, 2017. He would appear in 19 games, 18 innings of work, and pitched to a 3.50 ERA. His strikeout numbers were good, but his walks were high as he walked 12 batters in those 18 innings.
It was a strong showing for Santana, and earned him a spot on the Opening Day Roster in 2018, where he would stay for the rest of the year. Santana is not a guy who is going to blow away the competition, with a fastball that averaged just 94 miles per hour, however, he uses movement and deception to cause soft contact and full opposing hitters rather than just blowing the ball by them. It is a method that has worked for Santana throughout the Minor Leagues and helped him succeed once again at the Major League level.
His most used pitch was his slider in 2018 at 44.5% of the time, and it is his fastest pitch averaging 94.6 mph. It has 36.3 inches of drop and is 1.2 inches better than the average major League sinker and he usually works it on the lower outer edge of the plate. He likes to use the pitch early in the count and generates groundballs more often than not, at a 47% rate. That number went up 2% from the previous season while he allowed less fly balls and more line drives upping his effectiveness.
His next most used pitch, and probably his most effective, is his slider, which he uses 39% of the time. With 15.7 inches of break and 19.3 inches of drop, it falls off the table and causes hitters to swing over top of it more often than not. He throws it on the low inside corner and opponents are hitting just .156 against the pitch while generating 40 of his career-high 54 strikeouts. Even when they weren't striking out, batters swung and missed at the pitch just under 50% of the time and were put away 28.8% of the time.
Now that he is fully recovered from UCL surgery, Santana has looked strong in 2020 Spring Training as he looks poised to make a strong return. He appeared in five games before camps were shutdown, and threw five perfect innings while striking out four batters and threw 23 pitches. Not only was he getting batters out, but he was doing it at an efficient rate averaging just 1.56 pitches per at bat and 4.6 pitches per inning. For a guy who is not strikeout pitcher, efficiency is key and something you like to see coming back from a major surgery.
However, Santana did not make it through the first round of Spring Training cuts and was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis along with several other players. Looking at Santana's success early in spring training, it seems as though General Manager Ben Cherrington and Manager Derek Shelton thought Santana needed more time to get the elbow back to 100%. It might be a good idea to ease Santana back into working a full load in the Major League bullpen. However, it shouldn't be long before one of the Pirates best bullpen pieces gets back to action.
Prediction: 4-2, 2.88 ERA (35 Games)
I feel that Edgar Santana is going to come back and pick up right where he left off when he gets the call to the Pirates bullpen. He has had success at every level of professional baseball and I see no reason why he wouldn't continue that success in 2020. He may not return to the high-leverage situations we were seeing him in at the end of the 2018 season, but I think he will be a nice bridge pitcher to the back-end of the bullpen. He can be the guy who comes in to get a pitcher out of a jam and get big groundball when his team needs them.
As of now, the season is expected to begin somewhere around May 25th. Until then, we will continue to look at the men who make up this year's team and their contributions in 2020.
Comments
Post a Comment