Read this: Santana is Flushing away his talent by Ian O’Connor …and then come back here.
Reading that article was akin to O’Connor reaching into my brain, ripping out all the journalism ethics and stomping on it with metal cleats. Writing about what you assume a player would do if his water was spiked with truth serum? This isn’t a Harry Potter novel (though I love those).
It’s one thing to suggest that Santana would have won on a different team or with a different rotation or players behind him, but to suggest that he thinks he is “flushing away his talent” by pitching in Queens is just wrong. Truth serum doesn’t exist. Both Johan Santana and Francisco Rodriguez said that they wouldn’t go back on their contracts or wished they signed elsewhere, but O’Connor simply doesn’t believe them.
Maybe O’Connor should spend more time perfecting his truth serum than making assumptions about what players might be thinking, because that article is a waste of time.
From commenter @TweetTheMets, who truly hits the nail on the head:
What's truly puzzling about this column is the timing. O'Connor writes this off a loss that almost entirely belonged to Santana. Sure, teams can be put in a 4-0 hole in the 1st inning and hope his teammates bail him out, but it's far from routine. (Well, unless you pay for the kind of lineup the Yankees routinely put forth.) As much as baseball is a team sport, the fact is the starting pitcher has the most influence over its outcome. Sure, fielding is important, and park factors, and BABIP. But it almost always comes back to the starting pitcher. Now, if the pitcher had 27 wins on an awful team (Steve Carlton, anyone?) he'd be "wasting his talent" on that team. If he couldn't get to 27 wins because he kept losing games 1-0 and 2-1, he, too, would have valid complaints. But how does it make sense for Ian O'Connor to be waxing poetic about Santana and his talent and how it's out of place on the Mets the day after a stinker? If it's July, the team is out of contention, and Santana is throwing gem after gem, go ahead, write about how frustrating it must be to be a great player having a great season for a terrible team. I'm sure that column has never been written before.