Rule 5s & Circle Changes: Johan Santana Joins Twins Hall

The well-ballanced, Tom Seaver-styled "drop and drive" delivery-

whom Santana should have tied for career Cy Young Awards

were if not for some ridiculous voter preferences for Bartolo 

Colon and Mariano Rivera in 2005 Santana was plainly superior (see link)

Photo Credit: Steve Ellis

Johan Santana joined the elite list of all-time Twins Hall of Famers tonight, earning the exclusive blazer and a free, all expenses paid discount for a Murray's Silver Butterknife steak meal. It was a great night of Twins luminaries coming back to mesmerize Target Field, and a great acceptance speech by Santana. I completely remember my one and only Twins spring training visit in his 2000 rookie season. There wasn't much else to grab you with that team. The only other really notable development with the Twins roster heading into that year was the acquisition of Butch Huskey. Moving on...

We had gathered to watch him with the other spring squad members file into the main, Hammond complex on a sidewalk (located behind his catcher in the above frame) leading in from a side workout field. I remember turning to my brother-in-law, Mark, and gushing "There's the new rule five guy!," mindful of the mushrooming hype about him in the local, Minneapolis press dating back to the previous winter.

Baby Johan dispatches Jose Canseco, 

It would have been cool had he spent his entire career with the Twins. I was actually kind of done with him when he pushed for a trade to one of the New York clubs in late 2007. But, now in hindsight, New York...I get it. I'm only sorry they rode him into the ground with all the extra innings, higher pitch counts. 

As it was, he was a brilliant meteor, with his career years and Cy Young Awards bunched together, like the Ks on the scoreboard displays around the American League. He was the best for about four, five years running. Like Koufax. Or, Koufax-lite, at a minimum.

Comparisons aside, he'll likely never make the Hall Of Fame, but in his era, he certainly was in the discussion when the best pitchers in baseball were debated. A factoid: his career didn't take off until minor league pitching coach Bobby Cuellar taught him the circle change - echoing an earlier  circumstance in Twins history. 

In the 1983 season, then-Twins pitching coach Johnny Podres taught a struggling Frank Viola the same pitch to complement his arsenal. The result? Two Twins Cy Young Award winners, and two with the same back story. The difference being that while Viola had been a second round Twins draft pick, Santana had been acquired by the Marlins on Dec. 13, 1999 as a Rule Five pick from the Astros, and then sending him packing the same day in a trade with the Twins for Jared Camp. Camp, of course, never pitched in the Majors.

Here is some backup for me regarding Santana being robbed in 2005 Cy Young Award voting:

Stark: Picking Santana

Nov 8, 2005 Jayson StarkESPN Senior Writer Close Senior writer for ESPN.com 21 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer Author of three baseball books One of these millennia, the Los Angeles-Anaheim-California Angels were bound to have somebody win a Cy Young Award. Wouldn't you think?

"So Long, Everybody!" - Herb Carneal

My Dinner With Johan: Visiting Spring Training At Fort Meyers In 2000



It was the Spring of 2000 when I first saw

Johan Santana, that kid with the wide back

and big legs.  It wasn't even 3 months after

the Y2K scare, and 8 months before the

contentious Bush-Gore Presidential election.

 OK.  There was no dinner.  Or a cup of coffee. Or even much eye contact.  That would have seemed a bit weird, for him and me. But I did score 21-year old Johan Santana's autograph ten years ago, (thanks to Mark, my brother-in-law doing the hard work with the program below) in what was the lefty's first spring training with the Twins. He had been a rule 5 pickup by the Astros from Florida before being traded for Jared Camp the previous December.

Yes. He has a lovely Palmer script. Large portion at end of post.

I was content just scouting the "new guy" from a set of bleachers with a bag of peanuts while young Santana traveled with the other new recruits on the 2000 Twins roster from one workout field to another at the Hammond Stadium field. His first big league manager, Tom Kelly, kept his charges pretty busy, with various drills, batting, and fielding practices going on simultaneously at several fields in that morning's workout.

Memory serving me correctly, I saw Johan and

some other rookies enter the field near Section 115

(past third base)at Hammond Stadium on that March day in 2000.

Click on image for larger view.

What, exactly, is a rule 5 draftee? For a summary of it's whys and whereofs, I'll let this excerpt (from Fanhouse site, Dec. 8, 2010) link tell the story, if you're so inclined.

On a lark, we (Mark, my sister-in-law Nancy and I) had taken a 4-day jaunt down to Fort Meyers for a few days of warmth and baseball in March, 2000.  That's a golden memory of details worth repeating for print another time...

In any event, it's fun to think I was a witness to the beginning of the career of one of the greatest Twins pitchers to date. Johan went on to have three years of up-and-down  success (with an11-9 won-loss record) before becoming a sensation as a starter in mid-2003.  Credit pitching coach Bobby Cuellar for some minor league refining on that cool, circle change in 2002 at Edmonton AAA before sending Santana back as a polished lefty! 

The skinny on the "new kid."

I attended his first major league game on April 3rd, of 2000, in which Brad Radke gave up a homerun on the first pitch of the game and of the season to Gerald Williams of Tampa; yet, I don't remember seeing him pitch that day.

No, this Johan didn't invent a printing press.  But he could pretty

much print his own money after signing a 6-year contract in Feb., 2008

with those city slickers from the Big Apple. [sigh].

#36 Butch Huskey (right half) was the "big" off-season signing for the Twins.  Ay caramba!

May Your Taters Fly Far!
TT