The last time Johan Santana was healthy, Jaime Moyer was in middle school.
After throwing an intensive bullpen session Saturday, New York Mets left-hander Johan Santana walked by manager Terry Collins and proclaimed: “You’ve got your pitcher for Thursday.”
A day later, after Santana met with general manager Sandy Alderson, Collins and the rest of the rotation Sunday morning inside the manager’s office, that proclamation was affirmed.
Santana, who last threw a pitch in a major league game on Sept. 2, 2010, will start opposite Atlanta Braves right-hander Tommy Hanson on Thursday at Citi Field in the teams’ regular-season opener.
This is the Mets’ 51st season. Tom Seaver leads the way with 11 opening day starts for the team, followed by Dwight Gooden with 8. Now that he will make his 4th opening day start for the Mets, Johan Santana matches Tom Glavine for 3rd-most in franchise history.
R.A. Dickey, Jon Niese, Mike Pelfrey and Dillon Gee will round out the rotation, in that order.
Santana underwent surgery to repair a torn anterior capsule in his left shoulder 12 days after that last major league pitch.
“It means everything that we have done since I had my surgery, all the way to today, has been paid off,” Santana said. “We worked hard. And I’m very happy. I’m very happy that I have an opportunity to start the season from Day 1 with the team. That’s something that I really was looking forward to. I’m excited about it.”
Santana will make his seventh Opening Day start, his fifth with the Mets.
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1. Pasta-diving Jeter (jmac66) Posted: April 01, 2012 at 03:31 PM (#4094263)Let's hope it works.
Pokey Reese with the Mariners comes to mind.
In 1871, everyone did!
EDIT: also Johnny Sain of the Braves and Johnny Beazley of the Cards that same year
According to baseball reference Al Gerheauser, Jim Bagby, and Lefty Grove all debuted as an opening day starting pitcher.
And
So is it 4th or 5th?
Same here.
I'm expecting big things from Niese and Duda this year.
I bet the A's is Dave Stewart. Nats is Livan Hernandez, I would bet.
Not Steve Rogers?
I got 22/30--the Phila/KC/Oak A's answer surprised me, considering they've been around so long
EDIT: coke to Dan
Mark Prior with the Padres comes to mind. Also Mark Prior with the Rangers and Mark Prior with the Yankees, if one of those was a major-league contract.
Mind blowing. The Mets are such a minor league franchise.
not only Blue--I decided to check and the starters during Hunter's 10 seasons with the A's (1965-74) were:
Drabowski
Hunter
Nash
Hunter
Odom
Odom
Blue
Holtzman
Hunter
Hunter
That quiz was fun, I got Texas completely by accident. I thought their correct answer might be the answer for the Marlins.
There are two pitchers this clue might be describing.
The writer has also included a clue by saying "Los Angeles Dodgers" instead of "Los Angeles/Brooklyn Dodgers".
Got 'em all.
Me too.
This didn't work for me. I had to type it in word-for-word as they had the answer, or it didn't register. I was like "How the hell did anyone get Colorado?"
Did you guess first and last names? Guessing just the last name of either of those guys counts as a correct answer.
Nope. On my computer I had to get the first and last name of both players correct, and have them in the same order with the same punctuation. I seem to be the only one having this problem, and I'm using an outdated browser so that might be why. I retract my criticism.
That's the first thing I went to as well.
On mine I typed a few full names that didn't register, and only got them when I only typed in the last names. Then I typed a few that didn't register at all but turned out to be right. You're not alone. Cool app though.
Booooooooo.
Huh. I am stumped.
Also according to BB-REF, 525 non-pitchers debuted as an opening day starter. (Specifically, the PI report is "From 1918 to 2012, In first 1 games, Played: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF or DH, as Starter, In team's first 1 games, In team's first 1 games")
Most rookie opening day starters did not bat in the heart of the order and played the higher skill defensive positions (2B, SS, CF). The WWII bubble aside, the trend has been to start fewer rookies on opening day. Among the non-expansion teams, it seems the more successful teams (NYY, STL) started fewer rookies on opening day than less successful teams.
1. Opening Day Starter probably wasn't quite as big a deal back then.
2. Even if it was, Joe McGinnity would have stolen a couple in his early years; Mathewson probably wouldn't have started Opening Day in a modern context on his teams until 1906 at least, which would have given him a maximum of 10, which is Marichal's total.
Anyway, 29/30 for me, missed only the Angels. I had about half a dozen guesses for them, none of which were right.
Vida Blue, 1971, who lasted 1.3 innings against the Senators and then didn't lose another game for nearly two months.
Carl Pavano, 2005, which was also his Yankee debut. He left to a standing ovation.
Adam Wainwright could be the Cards opening day starter
Baseball Tonight said 5th as well. Unless I'm totally missing something, they're wrong, it's 4. Th is is his 5th year with the team, but he didn't pitch last year. Started 08, 09, 10, and now 12.
Why is that so surprising? Seaver and Gooden probably bogart about a third of the opening day starts in Mets history. Glavine probably pulled the duty in all five of his Mets years. Is there any Mets pitcher from the non-Seaver and non-Gooden eras who deserved to make five opening day starts?
Should Prior count? IIRC when he was signed, the Padres knew of his horrible injury history and a non-zero possibility of him never making it out of rehab.
Pokey and Madsen were both signed with the full intent of them playing out their deal. Pokey made it into the final exhibition game (and an infamous Mariners "home shopping network" ad) before bowing out for the season and the career.
Is "Opening Day" as a meaningful assignment something that post-dates integration? Looking at the list the number of pre-integration players is pretty low (I was also surprised about Mathewson).
Pavano was actually the second game that year. The first game was Randy Johnson's Yankee debut and David Wells' Red Sox debut.
I can't remember if he signed a big league deal, but the O's paid $700,000 last season to Justin Duchscherer who never made one pitch.
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