Fantasy Baseball: Johan Santana To Have Shoulder Surgery

Back on June 27th, I wrote a piece here suggesting that Johan Santana was droppable in mixed leagues as his strikeout rate had dropped and he admitted that he had not fully recovered from elbow surgery. In July, Santana proceeded to go 3-1 with a 2.55 ERA with a 28-11 K/BB ratio. In August, the results were not so good as Santana went 2-4 with a 4.70 ERA, but with a solid 47-10 K/BB ratio.

Then on September 7th, I wrote up my Top 10 pitchers for 2011 and included Santana in my Top 10 reasoning that even with the reduced K%, he still found a way to pitch very well.

On Friday, we learned that Santana was perhaps compensating for the elbow weakness by using his shoulder just a bit too much. The Mets announced that Santana will have surgery to repair a tear in his left shoulder. When asked if he would be ready for spring training, Santana responded with "I don't know".

Here is the news as reported by ESPN:

Johan Santana has suffered a tear of the anterior capsule of the left shoulder and will have season-ending surgery in the near future, the Mets announced on Friday.

An MRI taken at the Hospital of Special Surgery on Thursday revealed the tear. The injury is located on the front and bottom part of the shoulder close to the pectoral muscle, the team said, resulting in discomfort radiating through both the pectoral muscle and shoulder.

Santana ends the season with an 11-9 record, an ERA of 2.98, WHIP of 1.176, and a K/BB rate of 144-55 in 199 innings pitched. Over the past 5 years, we have seen his K/BB rate drop from 5.29 in 2005 to 2.62 in 2010, a significant drop. His K/9 peaked in 2004 at 10.5 and has steadily dropped to 6.5 this year.

I think we have seen the last of the ace pitcher that Santana has been for the last 7-8 years. He may still pitch, but my hunch is he won't be the same pitcher he was when the Mets signed him to that multi-million dollar contract a few years ago. This is not Omar Minaya's fault, but this could be the last straw for him as the Mets GM.

Going into 2011 drafts, I would not be surprised to see Santana begin the year on the DL, and we won't know how long before he returns to the mound. It just seems that we never get the complete story from the Mets front office-think Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. He may not be draftable in mixed leagues or NL-only leagues next year. He will be draftable in keeper leagues only if you can get him really cheap at the auction.