Johan in the A.L.

Everybody remembers the Santana to the Yankees/Red Sox saga last year, and how the Mets finally swooped in out of nowhere to get him. I, for one, was against the trade (from the Yankees perspective), and still am. I’ve always been against it partially because of my man-crush on Phil Hughes, and I’m still against it because of three numbers: 7.91, 2.42 and 91.2.
Those are Johan’s K/9, BB/9, and average fastball speed, respectively, from last season. To illustrate the point, here are those numbers from the last three seasons:

• 2006: 9.44 / 1.81 / 93.1
• 2007: 9.66 / 2.14 / 91.7
• 2008: 7.91 / 2.42 / 91.2

In case you didn’t notice, that’s not a good trend. His walks are up, and his strikeouts fell right along with his velocity. So it’s not like he’s taking something off his pitches in order to improve command. Couple that with a move to the weaker NL and it’s even worse. Why is it worse? Because when pitching in the NL, he gets the added bonus of facing the pitcher (or a weak pinch hitter), instead of a potential threat, every time through the lineup. Against non-pitchers, Santana struck out 176 batters in 215.2 innings, good for a 7.34 K/9. And that’s not even representative of what he’d do in the AL, either. With the twins, he was facing the DH ever time through (and generally stronger lineups), in the NL, some of the non-pitchers include generally weak pinch hitters and middling 8-spot hitters. For reference, that 7.34 K/9 is on par with guys like Scott Baker, John Danks, and Justin Verlander–all good pitchers, but none of them received any Cy Young votes this past season.