In re Santana:
Again, how do you rearrange the lineup to make it more productive. If we had a long lineup producing up and down, moving a black hole out of the cleanup spot is an easy call. When you only have one or two productive bats out of nine, it makes little, if any, difference.
We were told on this forum ad nauseum that all we needed to get Frankie going was to move him back to lead off. But he has been much worse since that move. Jose getting super hot has been the difference lately, not Frankie leading off.
Somebody (plural), besides Jose and Hernandez, are gonna have to start producing on a regular basis in order to back up our pitching in the post season.
Looking at the available players, who is/are the most likely?
Not Deshields, the catchers, Naquin, Naylor, Chang, Freeman. Obviously, Luplow is not gonna get a shot this late in the season.
So, its gonna fall on Lindor, Santana, and Reyes....based on what they have done in the past, and the damage they can do when they are on. The whole premise of the offense was built around those three, plus Jose and Hernandez. Years of decision making went into it.
We will live or die with those five. The FO wont change horses in the middle of the stream.
As for what I see with Santana, it hasn't changed over the past decade. I have no idea how he hits a baseball. Loooonnnngggg swing that always looks slow to me and that should be full of holes, but an uncanny ability to judge the strike zone. His stride, a timing device, drives me nuts. It can't work, but it does much of the time. So many moving parts, he is the antithesis of Michael Brantley.
But there is some cause for optimism, one of which is his penchant for slow starts. Also, what seems to be isnt necessarily what is.
He seems to be striking out a ton. It seems like he is pulling the ball more than ever. It seems that he is hitting a lot of pop ups and weak fly balls. But he's not doing any of those more than normal, last season being somewhat of an outlier.
An example...he is going the opposite way more than he has in nine years.
Its difficult to measure his numbers in this shortened season to what he's done over the course of previous 162 game seasons, and I suspect that his present numbers would look very similar if measured against the first thirds of those previous seasons, but one number sticks out...his BABIP is .210...83 points lower than last year, 39 points lower than his worst year, and 56 lower than his career number.
By almost every measurement, Carlos is due a huge positive regression. Will it come in time to help this year? I dunno. But IMO its far more likely than one of our never beens to suddenly become a middle of the order bat.
Its painful to watch him bat. But if I'm Sandy...and there is no internal indication of his bat speed slowing down, which we aren't privileged to...he stays where he is, because he's our best option moving forward.
