Looking at ESPN's player rater for starting pitchers reveals a shocking name: Ervin Santana. At the time of this writing, he's sitting well above Clayton Kershaw for the #1 spot, boasting a 0.77 ERA and 0.66 WHIP through his first five starts of the season. After a career of being known as good-but-not-great, it's shocking to see Santana seemingly peak in his 13th season on the hill and I wanted to dive into what he was doing to make it work. Santana gave us yet another superb outing on Tuesday night when he faced the Texas Rangers and I sat down to dissect how he did it. Here's the GIF Breakdown of that start featuring 18 HD GIFs.
To start all GIF Breakdowns, we look at the pitcher's strikezone plot:
