The Mets have claimed right-hander Dennis Santana off waivers from the Twins, tweets Dan Hayes of The Athletic. Santana is out of minor league options, and the Twins apparently attempted to pass him through waivers after deciding he wouldn’t break camp with the club. Minnesota claimed Santana off waivers from the Braves earlier in spring training.
Santana, 27 next month, once ranked as one of the top pitching prospects in a stacked Dodgers system but has begun to bounce around the waiver circuit after tough stints both in Los Angeles and Texas. He’s appeared in parts of five big league seasons but logged a 5.12 ERA (4.43 SIERA) in 139 innings.
Last season with the Rangers, Santana averaged a blistering 97.7 mph on his four seamer and 96.7 mph on his sinker. However, he still posted a below-average 21.2% strikeout rate with a bloated 11% walk rate en route to a 5.22 earned run average. Command has been an issue throughout his big league career, evidenced by his penchant for free passes (career 11.8% walk rate). That said, he’s consistently generated swinging strikes at an above-average rate (11.4% in 2022, 11.7% career) and induced chases on pitches off the plate at a high level as well (34.3% in 2022, 33.3% career).
Since Opening Day 2021, Santana has gone from the Dodgers to the Rangers (by way of a small trade), to the Braves (in exchange for cash), to the Twins (via waivers) and now to the Mets. This latest claim certainly doesn’t mean he’s a lock to win a bullpen spot with the Mets over the next two weeks, although the injuries to Edwin Diaz and Sam Coonrod have thinned out the Mets’ relief corps and opened up some competition.
Santana will join a group of candidates including righties Jeff Brigham and Stephen Ridings — both on the 40-man roster — as well as non-roster veterans like Tommy Hunter, T.J. McFarland and Jimmy Yacabonis. If he doesn’t win a spot, the Mets could attempt to pass him through waivers to retain him as organizational depth, just as both the Twins and Braves have unsuccessfully attempted to do this spring It wouldn’t at all be surprising to see GM Billy Eppler add further pieces from outside the organization. The Mets are known to have scouted Zack Britton as recently as yesterday — their third time watching him throw since the calendar flipped to 2023.
As for the Twins, Santana’s departure could re-open the door for hard-throwing righty Trevor Megill — the brother of Mets righty Tylor Megill — to make the Opening Day roster. It’s also possible that a non-roster player like Jeff Hoffman, Danny Coulombe or Jose De Leon could take that spot. Additionally, Minnesota has at least mulled the possibility of a six-man rotation, and there’s now an open roster spot that could be allocated to towering righty Bailey Ober, who looks like the sixth starter behind the projected front five of Pablo Lopez, Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Tyler Mahle and Kenta Maeda.
Makes sense as the Mets have a couple of bullpen openings these days
They have a 40 man spot open that’s for sure. Get a look at him until a better option gets dfa. There is a lot to like with Santana. No other team traded for him though so that’s not a good sign. Are the Mets smarter than the rest of the league and will turn this guy into a useful reliever?
They are not.
Unless I missed another move, I think he’s taking the open 40 man spot from them sending the R5 pick Greene back to the Yankees so they actually should have another 40 man spot opening once they move Diaz to the 60 day.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they sign Giles or Britton once they open that spot up.
Edwin who ?
Solid pickup for NYM
Diaz’s replacement?
Their 8th best reliever replacement who is now their 7th best reliever.
97mph is blistering? Maybe in 2000. Now it’s just pretty good
How fast can you throw?
He was just making a comment. Almost positive he was half joking.
Good thing you didn’t ask how hard he can throw. Well played, Braves Butt-Head, well played.
Average ’22 MLB 4-seam fastball speed was 93.9 mph according to Statcast. Santana’s was almost 4 mph higher so that does qualify as “blistering”.
Maybe Santana gets blisters when he throws 97 mph. 😉
I’d definitley consider something above the 90th percentile of fastball velocity as ‘blistering’.
Carlos Santana plays a blistering guitar. Just sayin’
Smooth
Have you ever tried to hit a baseball thrown at 90+ miles an hour?
You should see Willians Astudillos 46mph “fast”ball. Lights out deadly stuff.
We have our replacement for Diaz!!!! YAY!!! LOL
If you look at all the team’s, few have a lights out closer, but they still manage to win a game or two.
Run thousands of simulations with OOTP and you’ll see losing your #1 reliever doesn’t make any significant difference on the outcome
Losing Bryce Harper, or Manny Machado, does not make any difference either
I think if he didn’t matter the Mets wouldn’t have paid him like they did and let him walk at seasons end last year.
I think if he didn’t matter the Mets would have let him walk at seasons end last year instead of paying him like they did.
I used to play OOTP. I think one will need to run millions of sims to get any semi-reliable data. Even then there are missing/inaccurate variables. It’s not a flaw of the game as it wasn’t designed to provide real-life results.
Nonsense. You don’t need that much. I’ve spent 15 years with it. More than enough data to make conclusions
Then there is the real life evidence that losing Bryce Harper or Jacob deGrom doesn’t do anything to lower the win total
It’s been that way for decades. Fans flip out over losing a top player, but it doesn’t make a difference
Heck, both Scherzer and deGrom were out last year for a while, and the Mets were the same
Sure, it’s nice to have Diaz, but having David Robertson as the closer will produce around the same result
“Then there is the real life evidence that losing Bryce Harper or Jacob deGrom doesn’t do anything to lower the win total”
—————-
If if you’re a data scientist, I think the majority of people are going to disagree with this.
*Even
But we are talking about real life human beings and not a computer game here. If those players go down on a computer game, there is no effect on other players, but in real life human feelings occur and players can get down.
Agree. As long as you have a Juan Soto or Trea Turner or Travis Jankowski to replace Harper, losing him doesn’t make a difference.
Ouch. Travis Jankowski. Not exactly like having John Lowenstein on your Strat-o-Matic team and batting him cleanup because his homer/at bat ratio was Ruthian, yet he was only the lefty platoon utility player, not Ken Singleton, Doug DeCinces or even Al Bumbry.
@YDGM
Losing Diaz doesn’t matter, but letting Jankowski go was devastating. Camden’s game is broken.
Yep. Replacing Harper with Jankowski would get the same result. It doesn’t make a difference
Phillies were 50-48 with Harper, 37-27 without him last year. They were 31-20 when he went down from June 25th to August 25th
Losing even an MVP for two months does not make any difference
The OOTP simulations show the same thing. Losing a top player does not effect the outcome
Oye como va!
Nice
@Monkey’s Uncle…….Nice
Next shutdown closer for the Mets. Time to trade Edwin.
His third team in a month.
Wow another guy who can’t hit the strikezone, and when he does, he gets batted around. This move will surely save the season! It should be panic mode right now, this Eppler guy needs to go
The NL champs in 2022 had a bullpen very similar to what the Mets have now. The WS champs had a former rule 5 pick as their closer and retreads Montero and Feliz setting up. The O’s took a bunch of unheard ofs and had a nice bullpen last year. Bullpens are fickle, look at LA, tough to predict when an Evan Phillips is going to come out of nowhere.
Wampum, bullpens are fickle, and seemingly since the retirement of Mariano Rivera, cannot produce the same result year after year. LFGM interviewed but didn’t get Eppler’s job. It has been months of the same thing, sour grapes. And yet the Eppler run team won 101 games. So who has a right to criticize Eppler. LFGM does, it’s a free country. But assign any baseball IQ to his comments, nah. It just Eppler must go.
@EasternLeagureVeteran I completely understand that you would want to defend your boyfriend, I get that. Nimmo just got hurt, thats 180 million right down the drain that your bf gave him. 25 million down the drain with Diaz. 12 million down the drain with Quintana. I presume Verlander will get hurt and be out atleast half the season, 80 million dollars thrown in a fire. Lets not forget the 12 million dollars Carasco is owed as well, which is essentially like taking money and burning it
So… You don’t like Eppler, huh?
I think Eppler stole this dude’s lunch money when they were kids or something.
When they were kids? he hasn’t developed emotionally past a kid.
Buck Showalter is going to implode and get fired mid season mark my words Cheetos
Santana was fun when he was right, but man could that guy go cold. I remember weeks were you would just assume he was going to walk three guys and give away a lead on every appearance, it was tough. Feast or famine kind of guy.
WOW
Last time the Mets got a pitcher named Santana from the Twins, it turned out all right.
Another great Twins move. Dennis would have been worn out had he made the team.
Tito Santana’s son
You could do worse, maybe, but this isn’t going to make the Mets even marginally better. Santana’s WHIP is 1.400 even across his best two years, 2021-22. His ERA was 4.76 and that was with enormous good luck on flyballs not going for HR. He walked almost 5 per 9 and didn’t strike out 8 per 9.
The only thing he did well was prevent HR, and that was mostly luck, but Citi might help him stay that way. Still… they need to add a real reliever, someone at least as good as Ottavino and Robbie.
Too bad the Yankees and Mets don’t trade often bc they have a bunch of live pen arms to spare.
Left handed relievers are like the blind spot in Cohen’s bank account.