Cleveland Indians Extend Carlos Santana: Is He Worth It?

Mark Shapiro, Chris Antonetti, and the Cleveland Indians announced a contract extension with Carlos Santana earlier today worth $21 million over five years. 

This will keep Santana in a Cleveland uniform until 2016 with a $12 million dollar team option for 2017. 

Paul Hoynes reported the terms of the deal as follows:

Year	Salary
2012	$501,900
2013	$550,000
2014	$3,500,000
2015	$6,000,000
2016	$8,250,000
2017	$12,000,000

Santana will also receive a $1 million signing bonus. 

This is a low risk move from the Indians' perspective since they would have paid Santana over the next four years through arbitration anyway.

The downside is that they were only able to potentially take away one year of free agency with the team option.

That may be by design though, since the pre-arbitration contracts of Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner backfired on the Tribe. 

That brings in the question, is Carlos Santana worth the figures in the last three years of this contract? 

I won't add suspense and answer now with a resounding YES!

Carlos Santana was the Indians' best power hitter last year and with an offense devoid of run producers, it was crucial for the Indians to lock him up long term. 

Especially when your top power hitter is a switch-hitting catcher, a position that doesn't usually coincide with a big bat.

Santana has a career slash line of .244/.363/.462 (AVG/OBP/SLG) in 205 games.

I can only see this improving over the life of his contract as Santana learns to be a more complete hitter. 

Santana struggled some from the left side of the plate where he only hit .202 and it would be nice to see him start putting the ball in play more. 

Sometimes last year it seemed he either walked, struck out, or hit a home run.

Despite my complaints, he was one of a handful of players to have at least 25 home runs, 35 doubles and 90 walks last season.

Those 90 walks show he has the type of patience you would like hitters in the middle of your lineup to have. 

However, sometimes I think he is a little too patient at the plate by taking too many pitches in good hitter's counts. 

According to baseballreference.com, Carlos has never swung at a 3-0 pitch in his major league career and only swings on 2-0 counts 31 percent of the time. 

These are counts where you can sit on a pitch and make the pitcher pay for falling behind. 

Someone with the power and ability of Santana could really benefit from this practice, especially since he is expected to be the Indians top run producer.

Santana's bat was the reason he made it to the big leagues, but the converted infielder is slowly improving behind the plate with the help of Sandy Alomar Jr. 

In spring training, Alomar Jr. was able to help Carlos reduce his time to second base, which will be crucial in improving his caught stealing percentage—which was only 24 percent last year.

Sandy is also helping Santana's form behind the plate. 

Towards the beginning of last season, it didn't look like Santana was comfortable throwing his body in front of pitches in the dirt.  He would choose to try to catch the ball clean instead, which is a lower percentage play.

I believe Alomar has gotten Carlos to buy into what it takes to be a good defensive catcher and I look forward to seeing improvements this year. 

I know it seems like I am putting down what Santana brings to the Indians, but he has all the physical tools to be great.

I don't see anything that will stop him from reaching his potential. 

At the end of this contract, the Indians will be very happy they locked up Santana when they did.