Yesterday, the Kansas City Royals traded for pitcher Ervin Santana.  Santana had spent his entire career with the Los Angeles Angels up to this point and had seen equal amounts of success and failure. He was a main part of the Angels rotation in 2011 and threw a no-hitter.  Then, in 2012, something changed.  He regressed.  There was no apparent reason for the regression.  Now, the concern in Kansas City should be whether or not they just traded for a pitcher who may be concealing an injury.

In 2011, Santana pitched 228 2/3 innings.  He posted a 3.38 ERA and looked well on his way to becoming a fixture in the Angels' rotation.  He had never really been a dominant pitcher, but the 2011 season marked the second-straight year with a declining ERA and they second-straight year with more than 200 innings-pitched.  Santana's solid season in 2011 was marked by a no-hitter thrown on July 27, 2011 against the Cleveland Indians.  If you were an Angels fan, you had to feel as if the team had something special.  They had a rotation that included Dan Haren, Jered Weaver, and Ervin Santana.  Unfortunately, Santana fell back to earth this past season.


Santana tossed just 178 innings this past season, and he had a 5.16 ERA.  It was the second-highest ERA of his career.  He went 9-13 on the season and didn't do much to help the Angels stay in contention.  His struggles in 2012 could simply be a regression toward the type of pitcher he actually is - he has a career ERA of 4.33 after all - or it could be an indication that he was hiding an injury.

The 29-year old pitcher from the Dominican Republic pitched 200 or more innings in three of the last four seasons coming into 2012.  This meant he was keeping his team in the game enough to remain in the game himself.  And he was staying healthy.  In 2012, Santana did not have any significant injury, at least that was revealed, but yet pitched 50 less innings than in 2011.  Since he was making his starts, 30 of them to be exact, the fewer innings-pitched means he wasn't going as deep into games.  And that could be a sign of a hidden issue.

The first place I like to start when analyzing whether a pitcher is concealing an injury is velocity.  I'm clearly not a doctor, so I use what I have.  In this case, we can determine whether Santana has had significant drop-offs in velocity for certain pitches where velocity is important.

Let's start with Santana's career averages:

Courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net

Courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net