Even Without Best Stuff, Santana is Masterful
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
It can be a pitch, movement, or location that goes missing, but even the best pitchers often go out to the mound without a full arsenal. It is the ability to improvise, change plans, and take advantage of what is working that marks the difference between a good pitcher and a great one.
Last night, Johan Santana was not the same pitcher he was in the second half of the season. He wasn’t even close. His command of an entire half of the strike zone seemed to disappear, as did one of his three pitches. But by changing speeds and working the areas of the strike zone he was able to control, Santana turned in, if not a dominant performance, dominant results.
The Yankees clearly came into last night’s game with a set approach. Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez both put the first pitches they saw into play, and it wasn’t until Bernie Williams worked Santana for eight pitches that it became clear the Cy Young favorite hadn’t brought his best game. After getting Williams for two swinging strikes with 93-mph fastballs over the heart of the plate, Santana tried everything to put him down, throwing six pitches over the outer part of the plate before striking him out with a fastball up and in that was the first inside pitch he threw.
Santana’s struggle with Williams came on the heels of a Gary Sheffield at-bat in which he had thrown four of five pitches to the outside part of the plate. It appeared that he, too, had a game plan: Deny the Yankees’ right-handed hitters the chance to pull the ball, and put it where solid contact would result in nothing more than shots up the middle and serves to the opposite field.
Santana’s unwillingness or inability to put the ball over the inside part of the plate seemed tied to his lack of a breaking pitch. By my count he threw just three sliders through the first five innings – one in each of Ruben Sierra’s first two at-bats and one in Rodriguez’s second.
This hurt the Twins’ ace against both left-handed and right-handed hitters – his slider, when working, looks deceptively like it is coming in at the hands of lefty hitters and does in fact come in the hands of righties. It keeps them jumpy and it keeps them honest. When it’s not working, hitters can do what the Yankees did last night – wait for him to throw a fastball over the middle of the plate and go with it.
They still weren’t able to do much with their hits because of the great natural movement on Santana’s pitches, which makes most any contact weak contact. Jorge Posada’s two cue shots were typical of the solid but ineffectual hits the Yankees got last night.
Just as importantly, Santana was relying on a stellar defense that allowed him to pitch the ball where it would be put in play. The second inning was typical. It began promisingly for the Yankees, who hit back-to-back singles, only to see their rally snuffed out by a superb catch by left fielder Shannon Stewart and a double play by center fielder Torii Hunter, who snared a John Olerud liner and then pegged Posada at home plate.
It’s difficult to beat much lesser pitchers than Santana when you hit into three inning-ending double plays in four innings. And when Santana committed, in the sixth inning, to throwing his fastball on the hands for strikes, the results were more of the same – solidly hit singles and an inability to deliver the key extra-base hit that was needed.
Neither did the Yankees do themselves any favors on the bases. It’s not really fair to criticize the overaggressive base running of Rodriguez and Posada, who made the last outs of the first two innings at third base and home – they rightly assumed that runs were going to be at a premium. Still, it’s never good to make the last out of an inning at third base, and the creaky kneed Posada really shouldn’t have been testing Hunter’s arm by tagging up on a shallow fly to center.
The key at-bat of the game was clearly Jeter’s at-bat in the seventh inning. With Miguel Cairo on second base and Santana having given up two near home runs in the inning, Jeter’s weak groundout after flinching at an inside fastball and flailing at two high ones seemed the perfect picture of the Yankees’ night to that point. The Yankees had every opportunity to rip the heart out of the Twins by beating their unbeatable ace, but their best clutch hitter came up just short.