There may not have been an Angels pitcher who had a more question-rich season than Hector Santiago. At times he was frustrating, other times he was fine and other times he was incredibly frustrating. All in all in left everyone feeling a lot like this:
Was Santiago good or bad in 2014?
Let’s see, his 3.75 ERA suggests that he was decent. However, his 4.29 FIP suggests otherwise. There was also that little matter of him being such a mess mechanically after the first six weeks of the season that he got demoted to the minors. That’s usually a bad sign. An even worse sign was that when he clawed his way back the Majors, he never once recorded more than 18 outs in a start. Heck, he only went six full innings three times in that span. While that was some clever managing by Scioscia to avoid the times through the order penalty, it doesn’t exactly speak volumes about the confidence the team had in Hector. And just to make that point even clearer, Scioscia deliberately arranged his ALDS rotation so that he could avoid having Santiago start. So, yeah, I’m going to with “bad” as the answer to this question.
But wait, Santiago’s FIP and ERA always have a big gap, could that be real?
Certain pitchers have an ability to regularly outperform their FIP. Jered Weaver is one such example. I know Jered Weaver and Hector Santiago is no Jered Weaver. Santiago actually did show some signs of improvement this year. He cut his walk rate rate from 11.0% to 9.7%, which is far better than he ever posted as a starter or a reliever. He also cut his HR/FB rate, but that might’ve just been a function of moving to the Big A. Both might have been the result of not pitching deep into games.
A more concerning sign is that his strikeout rate also fell off. Oddly, Hector has generally been better at striking out batters as a starter before this year. That appears to be intentional though, same with the walks. Santiago appeared to be making a more concerted effort to pitch to contact this year. and it showed up in the results with his contract rate spiking to 84% and his swinging strike rate dropping to a career-low 6.7%. His balls in zone percentage only crept up by a little over one percentage point though, so maybe I’m just reading into those numbers what I want. He could just have been more hittable, but comments Santiago made during the season indicate he was doing this on purpose. Of course, he has been a walking excuse generator in his one year as an Angel, so maybe he’s just blowing smoke.
Should we be worried that Santiago’s velocity fell off again this year?
Velocity-concerning is America’s new favorite pastime. Surely then you can imagine the concern over Santiago losing a full mile per hour off each of his different fastballs. The problem is that this was the first year where he worked almost exclusively as a starter with just 9.2 of his 127.1 innings coming in spot relief work. The previous year he threw 18.1 innings in relief. The year before that, he only made four starts. The result is that it looks like he’s rapidly losing velocity.
That might actually be the case. Lord knows that Santiago has had his share of mechanical issues that could have cost him some zip this year, but there is enough noise in previous years from him getting to ramp up his heater in his relief appearances to not be totally certain that his velocity loss is real or at least real enough to not be such a significant drop.
So does that mean he’s better off as a reliever?
All signs appear to point to “yes.” Santiago’s profile is a pitcher who struggles to go deep into games, has high maintenance mechanics and throws a variety of pitches, but none of them particularly good. That is pretty much the stereotypical description of a guy that should be moved to relief. The wrinkle is that Hector has had enough success as a starter, be it real or just him pitching over his head, but also not seen his numbers play up in relief.
Of course, Hector also just hasn’t been around that long. 352 big league innings really isn’t all that much. He also never was a full-time starter for very long. Even in the minors, he didn’t start until 2011, his final year before getting called up. Maybe Santiago just needs more time and experience to figure out what he needs to do to succeed as a starter.
Final Answer
With so many questions about the Angels pitching staff, Santiago once again looks like he is going to be in for another year of role uncertainty. Odds are that he will start the year in the rotation, especially if Garrett Richards isn’t fully ready for Opening Day. After that, who knows. He would seem like an ideal solution to the left-handed reliever problem in the Angels bullpen but that was the case last year and the Angels chose to send him to the minors so he could stay stretched out as rotation depth instead. I guess we are just going to have to wait and see what the Halos are going to do with him, which is probably very frustrating to him.
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