Johan Santana Out For The Season With Shoulder Injury [Report]
Johan Santana, the New York Mets ace, may be done for the 2013 baseball season because he has apparently reinjured his shoulder.
An MRI has revealed a probable re-tear of the anterior capsule in Santana’s left shoulder, and Mets management believes that season-ending surgery is likely. “If this diagnosis proves to be correct, I think in all likelihood Johan will be lost to the Mets for the season,” Mets GM Sandy Alderson said today.
A two-time Cy Young Award winner, Santana, 34, has suffered with shoulder weakness during Spring Training in Florida, and several doctors have apparently confirmed the injury diagnosis. The lefty is in the final year of his huge $137.5 million contract with the Mets, which would mean his career with the team is over if he goes under the knife. Santana is back in New York considering his options. The Mets still owe him somewhere in the range of $25-$31 million pursuant to the contract.
Santana had the same surgery in September 2010, which required approximately 19 months of rehabilitation. It would be unprecedented for an MLB pitcher to undergo the same anterior capsule surgical procedure twice.
Santana pitched the Mets’ first no-hitter on June 1, 2012, in which he threw 134 pitches, and was never the same afterward; his ERA ballooned to 8.27 over the next 10 starts, and he wound up finishing the season on the disabled list. The no-hitter was somewhat controversial in that Carlos Beltran’s sixth inning line drive down the third base line was ruled a foul ball but replays showed that the ball landed in play.
Santana has a career win-loss record of 139-78, with nearly 2,000 strikeouts and an overall ERA of 3.20. He pitched for the Minnesota Twins from 2000 to 2007 before being traded to the Mets in February 2008 after he basically priced the Twins out of the market for his services. He subsequently agreed to the big, six-year extension with New York.
Interestingly enough, back in 2008, a Minneapolis sportswriter appeared on the Dennis Callahan radio show on WEEI in Boston and declared in no uncertain terms that the Mets made a bad deal because Santana would break down. So it appears that the writer’s prediction may have been on target.
Johan Santana flew to NY yesterday to be seen by Dr. Altchek. MRI on shoulder shows probable re-tear of anterior capsule.
— Adam Rubin (@AdamRubinESPN) March 28, 2013
That surgery takes a year or more to recover from. It took Johan almost 2 years last time. My take: probably career-ending.
— Adam Rubin (@AdamRubinESPN) March 28, 2013
For his Mets career, Johan Santana made $1.25 million per start and $191,771 per inning.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 28, 2013
[Image credit:David W. Leindecker / Shutterstock.com]
