Johan Santana: The Lost Man of Mets Camp

One of my favorite Mets bloggers, Patrick Flood, has joined one of my favorite Mets blogs, Amazin Avenue. If you've never read Patrick's writing before, he has a way of creating vivid imagery with words that very few sports bloggers are able to do. This was a particularly interesting post about Johan Santana, with this astute observation as to why he flew under the radar before becoming an All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner with the Minnesota Twins:

"...at his best Santana was genius. He didn’t throw remarkably hard by major league standards, his slider was just a junky waste pitch he only threw to lefties, and he always seemed to be fighting himself. He’s not unusual physically, maybe other than being broad shouldered. There are good reasons he was never a prospect and the Astros now-famously let a young Santana go in the Rule 5 draft. His gifts were never obvious because they were always hidden away in his mind. Santana’s brilliance was not only in reconciling his body and his will in the way all great control pitchers do, but in that his will was able to dominate the physical in ways that seemed, at times, almost supernatural. Like he could actually decide, after throwing a pitch, whether it was a fastball or a changeup. Or he could cause a popup to hang in the air just long enough for the shortstop to chase it down. Or he could not only manipulate most hitters, but actually control some. As in some poor slugger like Dan Uggla didn't even have a choice as whether to swing, he just swung or didn't swing because Santana made him."

Punk Hits: Why I'm Rooting for the Dutch in the WBC | Baseball Prospectus

I'm tempted to subscribe to Baseball Prospectus just to read the rest of this article, oddly written by the groom from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding".