The Mets completed a deal tonight for perhaps the reigning best pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana. With baseball-reference-com, plus a little bit of Excel apreadsheet fun, we can learn
agglio Ordonez, 5
--Homers given up to the Yankees: 1, in 40 2/3 total innings pitched.
--OPS by lefty hitters against him: .654
--OPS by righty hitters against him: .641 (so he's been even better with the platoon advantage against him)
--Of the 16 teams against which he has at least three decisions, he is undefeated against only two: the Mets and Yankees (3-0 against both)
--Homers given up to the Yankees: 1, in 40 2/3 total innings pitched.
--Overall his career record against NL teams is 16-4 in 182 2/3 IP, with a 2.27 ERA and a .554 OPS against (.187 BA against)
--At Shea he is 2-0 in 2 starts, 15 IP, 1 ER, 7H, 1BB, zero extra base hits, a 0.60 ERA and a .303 OPS against
--As a hitter, Santana has a lifetime batting average of .258 and a .636 OPS (compare that to Joe McEwing's career numbers for the Mets: .244 BA, .644 OPS).
--Almost nobody steals bases off Johan Santana. Johan has allowed 28 SBs in his 1,308.7 IP career. That's a stolen base allowed about every 47 innings. I looked at the 194 pitchers who pitched 1,000 innings or more since 1990. Johan's allowed SB rate is the sixth best of those 194 pitchers. Terry Mulholland was the best (one SB allowed every 102.5 IP!). The worst of these was Dwight Gooden, allowing an SB every 6.3 IP, but this is only counting his days from 1990 on, after his (very early) peak.
--Johan Santana has thrown, in his entire career, only 2 (!!) intentional walks. That's an IBB every 655 innings pitched. Since 1973 when the DH was first introduced, 163 pitchers have accumulated at least 1,000 IP pitching for American League teams. Of those 163 guys, Santana's 655 IPs per IBB is not only the the highest rate of IPs per IBB, it is ridiculously far beyond anybody else. Number 2 on the list is none other than current Met Pedro Martinez, who in his AL career surrendered IBBs at a rate of one every 277 IP. The average IP per IBB for guys on this list is about 58 IP per IBB, less than 10% of Johan's rate. #163 on this list -- the guy who gave up IBBs most frequently -- is Greg A. Harris, who started his major league career with the Mets. During his days as an AL pitcher, Greg gave up 58 IBBs in 1,021 IPs, a rate of an IBB every 18 IPs or so.
