Minnesota Twins: Reviewing Ervin Santana Before His Twins Debut
Today is the day we have all been waiting for. The odd thing is that we have said that a lot recently pertaining to the Minnesota Twins. Come and gone, the arrivals of top prospects Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano and today cometh the dawning of the Ervin Santana era for the Twins.
After being handed an 80-game suspension before the session due to a failed performance-enhancing drugs test, Santana is set to make his Twins debut today, Sunday, July 5.
While we are all excited to see what Santana will bring to the mound for the Twins, let’s recap the career of Santana so far to prime us for his start today against his former team, the Kansas City Royals.
Last season, Santana was a member of the Atlanta Braves and ended the season with a 14-10 record and a 3.95 ERA. Last season was Santana’s first and only season in the National League.
Santana broke into the big leagues in 2005 with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, United States, North America, Earth. Santana pitched with the Angels for eight solid seasons, finishing his Angels career with a 96-80 record resulting in a 4.33 ERA, 1.300 WHIP over the course of 1475 innings.
The best season of Santana’s career came in 2008 when he made the American League All-Star team and finished sixth in the Cy Young voting, Cliff Lee ran away with the voting that season. In 2008, Santana went 16-7 with a 3.49 ERA and a 1.119 WHIP in 219 innings. Santana had 4.5 strikeouts per walk and 8.8 strikeouts per nine innings.
He was really good.
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Since his Angels career, Santana has had one year stops with Kansas City and Atlanta.
While Santana’s career ERA currently sits at 4.17, in recent years his ERA has almost always sat in the 3.00s. Since 2010, only one season was his ERA in the 4.00s. Santana also averages over 200 innings a year which is always a great help for any team’s bullpen.
Santana was given a lot of money to come to Minnesota and to say the start of his Twins career has been rough would be quite the understatement, but starting today the 32-year-old can put that all behind him and just start pitching for his new team.
Except for the playoffs, which he’s ineligible for due to his suspension, but he can start pitching.