The NY Mets have certainly been taking a lot of heat for not improving their team this off season. Perhaps no better example of frustration from Mets fans is the fact that they appear to be planning on going into this year with basically the same starting rotation that failed miserably last year.

To make matters worse, each one of them has lingering health related problems to deal with.

• Johan Santana - Coming off 2009 season ending burn spur surgery
• Mike Pelfrey - Has an Oral fixation. In ditching his mouth piece he developed a habit of licking himself repeatedly on the mound
• Oliver Perez - Coming off 2009 season ending knee surgery and psychological confidence problems on the mound
• John Maine - Battled season long arm fatigue in and various complications with shoulder surgery in 2009
• Jon Niese - Suffered season ending right hamstring tear

Clearly the focus is on Johan Santana here. The hope is that Santana can be counted on to anchor the staff every 5th day and that the rest of the pieces fall into place.

This is not the first time that Santana has had surgery to remove bone chips in his pitching elbow.  Santana had the same operation after the 2003 season and came back with a career-high 20 wins and the first of his two Cy Young Awards for the Minnesota Twins.

Santana has said the pain in his elbow last year led to him alter his mechanics leading to diminished velocity, his inside fastball tailing back over the middle of the plate and causing his changeup to 'cut' back over the heart of the plate. Santana had to stop throwing side sessions in between starts last year because in his words, "I was trying to be ready for my next start, instead of putting pressure on my arm in between starts.''

On January Jan 26th, Santana threw 24 pitches over a 6 minute span at a 3 day Mets mini-camp. He said he felt well after throwing and spoke a bit about the challenge he had ahead of him.

"Right now we just have to focus on the pitches -- to make sure we get over 90 pitches by Opening Day. That's exactly what we did last year, and I felt pretty good last year. We'll see exactly where we end up with the program once spring training starts."

Santana will be 31 years old on opening day. One thing to keep an eye on is his SO / BB ratio. Since 2005, Johan Santana has had an alarming 40% drop in his SO / BB ratio. That's a trend that has to stop and reverse course if he is going to lead this pitching staff to having an effective year.

Although Santana's elbow surgery was considered to be minor, it is the second time they had to going in and clean him out, so any setbacks at this point in his rehab could have major ramifications.

As for how for what effect this will all have on his fantasy season, Dr. Roto has suggested that the prudent thing to do would be to stay away from Santana him on draft day. I would have to agree. At this juncture in his career, the risk/reward just doesn't seem to be there in paying Ace money for him. - Mike Cardano

Mike is the founder of Around the Horn Baseball Blog & Extra Point Football.

Yesterday's Great Bloguin Baseball Debate about "Should Albert Belle be in the Hall of Fame?" certainly created quite a stir. You can read more on that over at The Daily Something as Bill Parker has some thoughts on all your comments.

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