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Ervin Santana

Royals Select Ervin Santana

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Right-hander Ervin Santana is returning to the majors for the first time since 2019. The Royals selected the veteran’s contract, placed righty Josh Staumont on the IL for an undisclosed reason, recalled righty Tyler Zuber and optioned infielder/outfielder Ryan McBroom, Anne Rogers of MLB.com tweets.

Santana pitched for five big league teams, including the Royals, from 2005-19, and typically produced solid results while eating up a significant number of innings. The 38-year-old has six seasons of 200-plus innings under his belt, 2,421 in total, as well as a 4.09 ERA. While with the Royals in 2013, he fired 211 innings of 3.24 ERA ball, though Santana then rejected KC’s qualifying offer and went through a prolonged stay in free agency before signing with the Braves.

Santana lasted just one year in Atlanta before joining Minnesota, with which he delivered quality seasons in 2016-17. However, a middle finger injury limited Santana to five starts, 24 2/3 innings and an ugly 8.03 ERA. He continued to struggle during his most recent action, as he recorded a 9.45 ERA in three starts and 13 1/3 frames as a member of the White Sox. Santana finished the year in the Mets organization, but he didn’t pitch for them that season, and he sat out 2020 before signing a minors pact with the Royals.

Santana has started in 384 of 387 appearances, though it remains to be seen which role he’ll fill now. Notably, Royals starters have put up a 5.56 ERA – the sixth-worst mark in baseball.

Royals Sign Ervin Santana To Minor League Deal

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11:10am: Santana’s deal comes with a $1.5MM base if he makes the big league roster, tweets Lynn Worthy of the Kansas City Star. He can also earn an additional $1.75MM via incentives. Santana can ask for his release May 15 if he’s not on the Royals’ 40-man roster, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network.

10:52am: The Royals announced Tuesday that they’ve signed old friend Ervin Santana to a minor league contract. The veteran right-hander will presumably head to Major League Spring Training and vie for a roster spot.

Santana, 38, didn’t sign with a team for the 2020 season and hasn’t appeared in the big leagues since an early-2019 run with the White Sox failed to pan out. He starred for the Royals back 2013 — the start of a five-year run that marked the most consistently productive stretch of the two-time All-Star’s career. Santana racked up 211 innings of 3.24 ERA/3.93 FIP ball with Kansas City that year but found a harsh market in free agency after rejecting a qualifying offer and eyeing too large a contract early in the winter.

He eventually opted to take a one-year deal with the Braves — one that continues to benefit Atlanta to this day — before returning to the market in the 2014-15 offseason and cashing in on a four-year, $55MM contract with the Twins. Santana was the Twins’ most consistent pitcher for much of that deal, but the wheels came off in year four after he underwent surgery to repair a tendon in the middle finger on his right hand. After pitching to a 3.47 ERA in his first 500 innings in Minnesota, Santana was clobbered for an 8.03 ERA in just 24 2/3 innings in the final year of the deal. He signed with the ChiSox that offseason but was tagged for 14 runs in 13 1/3 innings.

It’s been quite some time since Santana was a productive big league starter now, but he’ll head back to the Royals organization in search of a job somewhere on a staff that looks heavily reliant on young, still-developing arms. Kansas City’s rotation has veterans Mike Minor and Danny Duffy locked into spots, and Rule 5 gem Brad Keller is set to open a fourth year in the rotation as well.

Jakob Junis gives the club an inconsistent but at times solid option, and Kansas City has a bevy of upper-level pitching prospects in the form of Brady Singer, Kris Bubic, Daniel Lynch and Jackson Kowar. Both Singer and Bubic made their MLB debuts in 2020, but neither is exactly a lock to hold down a spot all year — particularly given the difficulties of managing innings workloads in the wake of the shortened 2020 schedule.

The 38-year-old Santana will give the Royals a veteran depth option to compete for either a rotation spot or a long-relief job. He’s been pitching in the Dominican Winter League this offseason, logging a 2.61 ERA and a 25-to-11 K/BB ratio in 20 2/3 innings to date.

A One-Year Deal That Could Pay Off For A Decade

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It’s been more than six years since the Braves inked righty Ervin Santana to a one-year, $14.1MM deal after Spring Training was already underway. Santana, then 31, was a free agent for the first time and entered the market as one of the more appealing starters available to teams in need of a rotation upgrade. He’d just wrapped up a strong season with the Royals that saw him rack up 211 frames with a 3.24 ERA and a 3.16 K/BB ratio.

But Santana hit the market aiming quite high, reportedly seeking a contract worth more than $100MM. A big payday wasn’t exactly far-fetched — we predicted a five-year deal at a more reasonable $75MM term that winter — but teams clearly balked at a nine-figure guarantee for a pitcher who struggled with year-to-year consistency. Kansas City, after all, had only acquired Santana in a salary dump from the Angels after the righty posted an ERA north of 5.00 in a sub-replacement-level 2013 effort.

By the time Santana’s asking price dropped into the four-year, $50-60MM range as Spring Training approached, it was too late. He reportedly received three-year offers from the Twins (who’d sign him a year later) and Orioles that spring but preferred a one-year deal to reenter free agency next winter. The Braves obliged, signing Santana at the exact $14.1MM value of the qualifying offer he’d rejected four months prior.

Ervin Santana, 2014 | Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

The signing worked out swimmingly for Atlanta. Santana made 31 starts, totaled 196 innings and logged a 3.95 ERA (3.39 FIP) with 8.2 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 0.73 HR/9 and a 42.9 percent ground-ball rate. The Braves finished second in the NL East that year, but their playoff miss couldn’t be pinned on Santana, who largely held up his end of the bargain. At season’s end, Santana entered the open market a second time.

Unlike the 2016-21 collective bargaining agreement, the previous arrangement allowed players to receive multiple qualifying offers in their career. As such, the Braves issued a second qualifying offer, which Santana again rejected. This time around, his expectations were set a bit lower, and by the end of the Winter Meetings he’d landed a four-year deal with the Twins that guaranteed him $55MM. The Twins lost their second-round pick to sign Santana. The Braves received a compensatory pick at the end of the first round.

As readers have likely gleaned by now, that’s where the Atlanta organization struck gold. The Braves’ organic pick that year, No. 14 overall, saw them select lefty Kolby Allard, whom they traded to Texas last July to rent reliever Chris Martin. The compensatory pick they landed in exchange for Santana turned into Mike Soroka.

Mike Soroka

At the time of the selection, Soroka was an aggressive selection. Pre-draft rankings from MLB.com, Baseball America, FanGraphs and ESPN all had Soroka ranked in the 60 to 90 range among draft prospects. He was one of the youngest players in the draft and generally pegged as more of a second- or third-round pick. In their scouting report heading into the draft, Baseball America wrote: “There hasn’t been a player out of Alberta selected in the top 100 picks since the Red Sox picked Chris Reitsma 34th overall in 1996, and while Soroka probably won’t go that high, he should end up off the board in the first few rounds in June.”

Just 17 when he was selected, Soroka nonetheless rose quickly through the Braves’ system and steadily improved his prospect stock along the way. Soroka was at least three years younger than the average age of his competition at every minor league level he competed, and before he’d reached his 21st birthday he was suiting up for the Braves at SunTrust (now Truist) Park. Shoulder troubles in that debut campaign in 2018 limited Soroka to just 25 2/3 innings in the Majors another 30 2/3 frames in the minors.

This past season, of course, unfolded quite differently. Were it not for the outrageous power display put on by division rival Pete Alonso, Soroka might well have locked up Rookie of the Year honors. The 2019 NL runner-up pitched to a pristine 2.68 ERA with 7.3 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, 0.72 HR/9 and a 51.2 percent grounder rate. Soroka was worth 4.0 fWAR and 5.6 bWAR, and he ranked well above average in terms of Statcast metrics such as opponents’ barrel rate, average exit velocity, expected ERA and expected wOBA. Considering he was 21 for most of the 2019 season, optimism regarding Soroka abounds.

With Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies already locked up long term, Soroka stands out as an obvious candidate for a long-term deal of his own. At the very least, the Braves can enjoy Soroka for four full years beyond whatever semblance of a 2020 season we get, all the way through the 2024 season. So long as Soroka’s shoulder holds up, it seems the Atlanta organization will still be reaping the benefits of that Santana signing more than a decade after the ink on his contract dried.

Phillies Looking At Ervin Santana

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We haven’t heard much about Ervin Santana since his minor league deal with the Mets was up at the end of last season, though the 15-year veteran recently threw for the Phillies, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports (Twitter link).  It isn’t known whether or not Philadelphia has continued interest in Santana in the wake of this workout, though adding an experienced hurler on a minors contract wouldn’t be a bad idea for a team with some question marks at the back of the rotation.

Though the Phils have a number of arms already vying for the fifth starter job, none of the current candidates have Santana’s track record.  It was only back in 2017 that Santana posted one of the finest years of his career, tossing 211 1/3 innings of 3.28 ERA ball for the Twins and finishing seventh in AL Cy Young Award voting.  That season capped off a five-year stretch for Santana that saw him average 182 innings and a 3.52 ERA per year with Kansas City, Atlanta, and Minnesota from 2013-17.

Since then, however, Santana has thrown only 38 innings total over the last two seasons.  Finger surgery kept Santana sidelined for almost all of the 2018 campaign, and he posted a 9.45 ERA over only 13 1/3 innings for the White Sox last season before being released.  The results weren’t much better for Santana in the Mets’ farm system, as he managed just a 5.31 ERA over 95 total innings at the Triple-A and high-A ball levels.

Santana turned 37 in December, so his decline could be simply chalked up to age and wear and tear after the accumulation of 2421 1/3 Major League innings.  He does want to continue his career, Heyman notes, and Santana is also hoping to pitch for his native Dominican Republic if the D.R. national team qualifies for the Olympics.

Mets Sign Ervin Santana

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The Mets announced Friday that they’ve agreed to terms with right-hander Ervin Santana on a minor league contract. The deal is still pending a physical. Assuming he passes that test, he’d head to Port St. Lucie to begin building his arm strength back up.

Santana, 36, missed nearly all of the 2018 season after undergoing surgery to repair a tendon in his right middle finger just prior to Spring Training, and the Twins declined a $14MM option on him last November. He signed a minor league pact with the White Sox this offseason but was released after just three unsuccessful starts with the team.

Despite the poor showing in 2018-19, Santana was a consistently and perhaps quietly effective mainstay in the Twins’ rotation in the preceding three seasons. From 2015-17, he pitched to a 3.47 ERA with 7.2 K/9 against 2.7 BB/9 and even was named to the American League All-Star team in 2017. That year, he racked up 211 1/3 innings, tossed five complete games (three shutouts) and finished out the season with a strong 3.28 earned run average.

The Mets’ rotation hasn’t performed as well as hoped in 2019, and while no one would reasonably expect Santana to return to his 2017 levels, he could eventually push Jason Vargas for the fifth spot in the rotation. He’s gone more than a month without pitching since being cut loose by the ChiSox, so he’ll need some time to build up, though. If nothing else, he’ll eventually serve as a depth option in the event of an injury at the big league level. New York has been using Wilmer Font in that role but has received just 10 1/3 innings of 7.84 ERA ball in three starts since trading a low-level minor leaguer for him.

Ervin Santana Elects Free Agency

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April 29: Santana has elected free agency, per an announcement from the White Sox. Daryl Van Schouwen tweets that the decision relievers the ChiSox from any further financial obligations regarding Santana, which seems to suggest that the veteran righty agreed to a 45-day advance consent clause as part of his contract.

Players with more than five years of service time earn the right to retain their salary even after being released or rejecting an outright assignment in favor of free agency. The 45-day advance consent clause, however, gives teams the option of cutting loose a veteran with six-plus years at any point within the season’s first 45 days (barring an injury) without being on the hook for the remainder of his salary. (Trade Rumors’ Zach Links examined 45-day advance consent clauses in depth a few years ago.)

April 26: The White Sox announced this morning that they’ve designated veteran right-hander Ervin Santana for assignment. His spot on the active roster will go to Eloy Jimenez, who has been reinstated from the bereavement list.

Santana’s stay with the Sox proved to be brief, as he made only three starts before the team shifted course today. The 36-year-old righty pitched just 13 1/3 innings for the Pale Hose, allowing 14 runs on 19 hits and six walks with only five strikeouts.

Chicago inked Santana to a minor league contract with a rather hefty $4.3MM guarantee at the MLB level in hopes that he could bounce back from an injury-ruined 2018 season. Santana underwent surgery to repair a tendon in his pitching hand in February of 2018, and lingering effects from that procedure limited him to just 24 2/3 ineffective innings with the Twins. Following that injury shortened campaign, Minnesota declined a $14MM option on the righty.

Prior to that injury, however, Santana was not only durable for the Twins but quietly one of the league’s more effective starters. Santana turned in 392 2/3 innings of 3.32 ERA ball with 7.2 K/9 against 2.6 BB/9 for the Twins from 2016-17. The 2017 campaign saw Santana toss five complete games — a rare feat in this era of baseball — including three shutouts. From 2010-17, Santana avoided any absences due to injury and averaged 30 starts and 192 innings per season (despite an 80-game PED suspension at the onset of the 2015 season).

It’s now uncertain whether Santana can reestablish himself as a viable rotation piece at the big league level, although given his track record and the sheer number of teams that could use rotation reinforcements, one would imagine that he’ll get the opportunity to do so. He’ll first have to clear release waivers — it’s unlikely that the Sox find a trade partner for the righty — but once he does, he can sign with any club on either a minor league contract or an MLB deal worth the prorated league minimum.

As for the Sox, they’ll look to internal options to help right the ship in what has been an awful rotation to begin the year. While Carlos Rodon has performed well through the season’s first month, each of Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Ivan Nova and Santana have pitched poorly. Dylan Covey, Jordan Stephens and top prospect Dylan Cease are all looming in Triple-A as potential options, or the team could simply plug Manny Banuelos into the fifth spot in the rotation moving forward. Some type of spot starter will likely need to be recalled in the coming days, however, as Giolito is on the shelf with a hamstring injury at the moment.

White Sox Select Contract Of Ervin Santana

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The White Sox announced today that they have selected the contract of veteran righty Ervin Santana. He’ll make his first start for the club today after inking a minor-league deal this spring.

The groundwork for Santana’s ascension to the MLB roster had already been laid by the Chicago front office. There was already a 40-man roster spot to work with and the team optioned righty Carson Fulmer back to Triple-A yesterday.

It’ll be interesting to see what the 36-year-old Santana has left in the tank. He was sidelined for much of 2018 with a lingering finger injury and wasn’t effective when he was able to pitch. But he was stellar in the prior two seasons, turning in a 3.32 ERA over 392 2/3 total innings. The peripherals didn’t support quite those results, and expectations ought to be tempered, but there’s reason to hope he can return to being a solid MLB starter.

As for Fulmer, he’ll need to earn his way back into the majors or await an opening. He has now seen action in parts of four MLB seasons but hasn’t come close to fully harnessing the talent that led the South Siders to pick him eighth overall in the 2015 draft. Through 70 1/3 innings at the game’s highest level, Fulmer owns a 6.53 ERA with 7.8 K/9 and 5.9 BB/9.

Ervin Santana Reportedly Nearing Activation

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Right-hander Ervin Santana will make his White Sox debut Tuesday with a start against the Rays, James Fegan of The Athletic and Scott Merkin of MLB.com suggest. Santana is not on Chicago’s 40-man roster, but the club has an opening, so a corresponding move isn’t a necessity in that regard. The White Sox did free up a 25-man spot Sunday when they optioned outfielder Ryan Cordell to Triple-A Charlotte, though.

Once promoted, the 36-year-old Santana will immediately become the elder statesman in a White Sox rotation which features Ivan Nova, 32, and three mid-20s hurlers in Carlos Rodon (26), Reynaldo Lopez (25) and Lucas Giolito (24). The former Angel, Royal, Brave and Twin will bring a quality track record to Chicago, having logged a 4.06 ERA/4.26 FIP in 384 appearances (381 starts) and just over 2,400 innings. Santana has also fired upward of 200 frames in six individual seasons, including as recently as 2017, when he turned in a terrific 3.28 ERA in a 211 1/3-inning campaign in Minnesota.

Had that version of Santana shown up last season, he likely would have landed a guaranteed major league contract in free agency over the winter – or the Twins could have exercised his $14MM option for 2019. Instead, Santana suffered through what may have been a career-worst campaign and then sat on the free-agent market for nearly four months before signing a minor league contract with the White Sox in late February. However, the deal did come with a $4.3MM salary in the majors, which is especially high for a minors pact.

A right hand injury limited Santana to just five starts and 24 2/3 innings in 2018, when he registered an atrocious 8.03 ERA/7.94 FIP with a personal-worst strikeout rate (5.84, compared to a lifetime 7.18) against 3.28 BB/9 (versus a career 2.8 mark). Nevertheless, after their rotation was among the majors’ worst last season, the White Sox deemed Santana worthy of an affordable, low-risk accord. Now, a rebound from Santana would be a boon for the White Sox, who have received mixed results from their starters this year. Rodon has been effective in both of his performances, while Nova and Giolito have each posted one solid start and one clunker, and Lopez hasn’t been good in either of his appearances.

White Sox, Ervin Santana Agree To Minor League Deal

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Feb 23: The deal is official and Santana is present in the Sox clubhouse today, per the Athletic’s James Fegan (via Twitter).

Feb 22, 1:15pm: Santana’s contract comes with a $4.3MM base salary if he makes the roster, Heyman tweets. That’s an abnormally large base salary for a minor league pact and likely speaks to the interest that Santana had elsewhere. In essence, the White Sox gave Santana the opportunity to be guaranteed a rate that many would’ve expected him to command on a big league deal, but did so while delaying the need to make an immediate 40-man move.

10:52am: The White Sox and free-agent right-hander Ervin Santana have agreed to a minor league contract, Jon Heyman of the MLB Network reports (via Twitter). The contract is pending a physical. Santana will head to Major League camp and compete for a spot in a thin rotation mix.

Santana, 36, has been a longtime divisional foe for the ChiSox, having spent the past four seasons leading the Twins’ rotation. The final season of his four-year, $55MM pact with Minnesota was almost entirely wiped out by surgery to repair a tendon in his right hand, however. That injury limited him to five starts and just 24 2/3 innings and led the Twins to decline a $14MM option over the righty.

Prior to the 2018 season, however, Santana was both a durable and high-quality workhorse. From 2016-17, Santana ranked 11th in the game in total innings pitched and also ranked 11th among qualified starters with a 3.32 ERA. In all, while his four-year deal with the Twins was marred by last year’s injury and a PED suspension in 2015, he worked to a 3.68 ERA with 7.1 K/9 against 2.1 BB/9 in 525 1/3 innings with Minnesota. When he was healthy and on the field, Santana was generally a quality option on the mound, making him a logical pick for the Sox — especially at this price point.

So long as he is healthy, it seems quite likely that Santana will break camp in Chicago’s rotation. Currently, the Sox are looking at Carlos Rodon, Ivan Nova, Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito as the top four in their rotation. Santana will compete with Manny Banuelos and Dylan Covey, among others, in trying to secure that final starting job. Given that slate of rotation options, it’d rank as a surprise if a healthy Santana didn’t secure a place on the roster this spring.

Santana becomes the latest but perhaps most surprising veteran player to settle for a non-guaranteed pact in a second consecutive winter that has been unkind to veterans in their 30s. While last season was obviously a nightmare for Santana, he’d averaged 182 innings of 3.52 ERA ball from 2013-17 with the Royals, Braves and Twins.

8 Low-Cost Rotation Depth Options

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We ran through some of the remaining sources of offensive power yesterday. Today, we’ll do the same for rotation pieces. There are not all that many established starters left on the market, but there are still a handful who stand out as plausible candidates to gobble up some frames without costing much for an acquiring team. (Jeremy Hellickson would’ve been included here had he not agreed to terms with the Nats this morning.) As before, we’ll be ignoring those players who MLBTR predicted to secure multi-year deals entering the winter (e.g. Dallas Keuchel, Gio Gonzalez).

Presented in order of 2018 innings pitched…

James Shields: He topped 200 frames for the tenth time in 2018, so teams looking for volume will have to place Shields on the top of their value list. True, the results (4.53 ERA) and peripherals (6.8 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 1.5 HR/9, 35.2% GB rate) weren’t exciting, but Shields is also a respected staff member who’d be valued for his positive influence on teammates. For the right organization, he’s a viable innings eater.

Bartolo Colon: Yep, he’s back — or at least he hopes to be. Home runs were a big problem last year for Big Sexy, but he still racked up 146 1/3 frames on the year for the Rangers. As with Shields, there won’t likely be much interest from contenders, but other teams that are thin on upper-level pitching depth could look to Colon as a cheap source of innings.

Clay Buchholz: It’s quite a different story for the 34-year-old Buchholz, who had a nice turnaround campaign before it was cut short by yet another injury. Organizations that are interested in building waves of talented arms, whether or not they come with health concerns, will certainly be intrigued by Buchholz, even if his peripherals (7.4 K/9, 2.0 BB/9, 0.82 HR/9, 42.6% GB rate) didn’t quite support the sparkling 2.01 ERA he carried through 98 1/3 innings last year in Arizona.

Yovani Gallardo: Though he made it through 94 1/3 innings, the outcomes weren’t pretty for Gallardo. Memories of his days as a sturdy mid-rotation starter are long faded, though perhaps there’s reason to believe in at least some amount of positive regression. Gallardo’s 6.39 ERA in 2018 was caused in some part by a low 64.5% strand rate. Of course, ERA estimators still valued his contributions in the low-5.00 realm, so there’s not a ton of room for optimism.

Edwin Jackson: Jackson ran up a productive ERA in about a half-season of work as a key member of Oakland’s patchwork rotation. But the spread in this case between his ERA (3.33) and ERA estimators (4.65 FIP, 4.88 xFIP, 4.98 SIERA) is significant. Jackson is still averaging better than 93 mph on his heater, but he likely won’t benefit again from a .240 batting average on balls in play from opposing hitters.

Brett Anderson: Some will be surprised to learn that Anderson only celebrated his 31st birthday earlier this month. The lefty debuted as a 21-year-old and has had a tumultuous career, but he put forth a solid effort in 80 1/3 frames with the A’s in ’18. Anderson registered a 55.6 percent grounder rate and notched a career-best 1.46 BB/9. He doesn’t miss many bats and has a long injury history, but the southpaw’s knack for keeping the ball on the ground and his typically low walk rates could be appealing for a team seeking depth rather than a candidate to make 30 starts.

Doug Fister: A knee injury wrecked Fister’s 2018 season, but the righty displayed his typical penchant for keeping the ball on the ground (50.4 percent) and avoiding free passes (2.5 BB/9). Fister managed a 4.50 ERA in 66 innings — nearly half of which came at the launching pad that is Globe Life Park in Arlington. It’s an extraordinarily small sample, to be sure, but the righty did notch a 2.82 ERA and 4.14 FIP in 35 2/3 innings on the road. As far as depth options go, clubs could do far worse than the 35-year-old veteran.

Ervin Santana: Only 10 pitchers threw more innings than Santana between the 2016-17 seasons, but an injured tendon in his pitching hand that required surgery last offseason more or less wiped out his entire 2018 campaign. It’s perhaps heartening that the injury wasn’t specific to the his elbow or shoulder. Santana’s results in 24 2/3 innings were awful (22 runs on 31 hits and nine walks), though it’s unlikely that he was healthy when on the hill. He may be 36 now, but Santana posted a combined 3.52 ERA in 907 2/3 frames from 2013-17. If his hand is healed up, he could be the best bet for a productive season on this list.

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