Saturday, December 1, 2007
Why I don’t like the Recent Santana Trade Rumors
Johan Santana will very probably be the best pitcher in baseball in 2008. He would make the Yankees a better team. Unfortunately, it looks more and more like it will cost the Yankees Phil Hughes to get him. If that’s the case I will have a very difficult time dealing with this theoretical trade if it happens.
I’ve already gone through the numbers about the potential for Santana to decline going forward. That’s the scenario based on the history of starting pitchers entering their 30s. It’s really not the decrease in performance that’s the big concern, it’s the high attrition rate due to injuries. It’s a simple fact that pitchers collectively pitch fewer innings as they age and that cuts into their value. It does not mean that Santana will not be able to continue excelling for 34 starts a year, just that it’s unlikely.
So the Yankees would probably be signing Santana to a big money extension while there’s a very solid risk that he will be getting paid for his 2003-2007 seasons and not his 2008-20?? whatever seasons. Frankly, that’s not a big deal to me. That’s just money and the Yankees have pissed away a lot of money over the years on horrible signings.
The problem is trading Hughes. The Yankees will be trading Hughes for basically one year of Santana and the right to pay him what he probably feels is his market rate going forward. Think of Hughes as a posting fee for the right to sign Santana basically.
There is a group of Yankee fans for whom winning the World Series is the only reason they watch the team apparently. Anything less than that makes the season a waste. Once the Yankees lose a few games they stop watching the team untl the next winning streak. I have no problem if that’s the type of fan you are, but I’m not that kind of fan. While I’d like to see my team win the World Series every year, I understand that it’s just not possible and that it’d probably ruin baseball.
I try to enjoy every game of the season. I watch baseball to be entertained for however many of the 162 regular season games I can watch or listen to plus the postseason. I like to see uncertainty. I like to build an emotional connection to the players I watch pretty much every freaking day. I like to hear and read about the draft and international free agent signings. Then I like to follow the exploits of those draftees and signings as they move up the minor league chain. I pour over scouting reports and stats and all the information that’s available out there and anticipate the arrival of the next big thing.
I’ve been a Yankee fan since the mid 1980s. I’ve always felt this way. We didn’t have the internets back in them days but I used to ride my bike to U.S. News every two weeks to grab Baseball America. I looked through every stat line in the back and read every scouting report and looked over every top 10 list waiting for the next great wave of Yankees to arrive. From Dan Pasqua to Rex Hudler to Henry Cotto to Alfonso Pulido to Bob Geren to Scott Nielsen to Gerald and Bernie Williams to Al Leiter to Roberto Kelly to Jay Buhner and so on. When Leiter got traded for Jesse Barfield I was devastated.
Think of the progression with Hughes. He was drafted in the first round of the June 2004 draft with the compensation pick the Yankees got for losing Andy Pettitte. Most people hated the pick at the time because OMG HE’s A HIGH SCHOOL PITCHER AND THEY ALWAYS GET HURT. Hughes pitched a couple of games in 2004, but really made his presence known in 2005 in class A and A+. In what was being considered a barren Yankee farm system he was getting publicity as a true phenom. Then came a monstrous 2006 where Hughes really stamped himself as one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. We finally got to see him pitch in 2007 and while he had his ups and downs he gave us plenty of glimpses of the potential he showed in the minors, and the hope of better to come in the future.
So now, after four years of anticipation and building an emotional attachment to Hughes, he may be gone. Just like that. The guy who was untouchable might no longer be a Yankee. It sucks.
Odds are that Hughes will not live up to his hype. It’s just a fact. He’s probably never going to be as good as Johan Santana is right now. But it would have been more enjoyable for me as a fan to see if he could be, than to watch another person who came to the team for money and who adds to the feeling that anything less than a World Series victory is a disgrace. Santana’s not Kevin Brown or Randy Johnson, he’s going to be 29 and still in his prime, so it’s not quite as bad as it was with those two. While my forecast for Santana is correctly pessimistic after the next few seasons, there’s a good chance he’ll continue to be great for the forseeable future. I completely understand why the Yankees made this move might make this move.
But I am just not feeling excited about potentially adding the guy who is probably going to the best pitcher in baseball in 2008 when I probably should be. Losing Hughes would sting. A lot.
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