I'm going to miss Johan during the offseason. What a joy to watch pitch. That man is an absolute specimen. And his change up is D-I-R-T-Y

Also, does this mean that the Twins are going to lose tomorrow in their quest for .500? Or did Johan and BRadke help them better understand what exactly they're questing for...

i am actually crying i was laughing so hard while reading about santana coaching the others... THANK YOU BATGIRL for brightening my day when i feel so overloaded with homework, then i get to read this and feel so happy that well, i don't really mind doing my homework as long as i can take a bg break every two minutes or so...

At least the ace did his part this year- is he going to be pitching again on sunday? anyone know?

I would LOVE it if Jesse would employ a little BW when he pitches. wonderful suggestion, BG! you deserve an award for that very fine idea. yes yes, a Nobel Prize or something...

Absolutely brilliant Batgirl. I long ago gave up trying to express my Johan sentiments, but you captured them beautifully. Thanks for writing this.

Dear BG,

This reminds me of what we discussed earlier.

Conspiratorily,
Donnalove

A Santana win, a Nathan sizzlin' hot save, butt wiggling lessons AND a Sound of Music parody...

I shall go to sleep a happy woman tonight. ;-)

I sat up in the Cheap Seats tonight, and actually wrote on my scorecard, "We are so privileged to get to watch Santana so often." I feel awed that Bat-girl was thinking the same thing.

Santana giving lessons during BWP? I know tomorrow I will burst out giggling in the middle of all of my meetings at work. That was too funny for words!

Dear Hannah,

Yes, according to DicknBert, Johan will be pitching on Sunday.

"There are three prime candidates for the AL Cy Young award, too – Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland and Bartolo Colon." ~Yahoo sports

Uh excuse me...what about El Presidente himself?

Seeing as he leads two of the three major stats looked at for pitchers, you would think that would qualify him as a prime candidate for Cy Young...supposedly he doesn't have enough wins...but most of those guys only have 1 or 2 more than him. With his miniscule amount of run support he actually has a surprising number of wins. Is there something I'm missing here? Is the only reason Santana isn't a contender because we aren't going to the playoffs?

The butt wiggle reminds me of my cat O'Malley. He does the same thing just before pouncing. I believe you are correct, Beege, it must be the source of some cosmic-feline power.

Yahoo Sports clearly forgot about the butt wiggle. Good thing BG clarified it for them :)

Will someone please clue me in to how Buehrle and Garland can still be in contention for the Cy Young. Doesn't being a member of the team to suffer what will be the greatest late season collapse in the history of baseball, not to mention one of the Starting pitchers, automatically disqualify you from any end of season awards? These guys should be the ones going out to stop the slide and at the very least get a W every 5 days even if they have to pitch all 9 innings.

JKS is a much more worthy candidate, a documented lack of run support throughout the entire season, pitching his mind out for the last 2/3 of the year and still being pretty damn good for the first 1/3.

I will say though, this is an extremely weak year for Cy Young candidates. There is no clear cut winner like in the last few years. I hate to say it, but this might be the year Rivera gets his lifetime acheivement Cy.

On a more positive note, great win tonight. 3 more to go and the quest will end in success!

I was pleased to hear Peter Gammon describe Santana as best pitcher this year (as he's also predicting that Colon will get the award.)

By the way, for those who have been around for long enough, that butt wiggle should be known as the Shane Mack Memorial Wiggle to the former outfielder who had a great one at the plate! :-)

I propose El Presidente's next campaign slogan be "Johan Santana: the suck stops here."

Tonight's game was a nice change. The boys go up 2-0, and I'm thinking "sure win." As opposed to down 0-2 and thinking "sure loss".

(But I fear the only way he'll get Cy #2 is if he goes complete game shutout or something the last day of the year. He'll absolutely need to win, lead MLB in K, and pass Millwood for the AL ERA lead (he's .005 back).)

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooopernatural.

Doc--

I bet Peter Gammons is right on both counts.

Ozzie Guillen -- that guy -- devotes entire post-game press conferences to the greatness of Santana. Ozzie's had ocular proof. He believes, and he's right as well.

Linked at my name: J. Santana's season stats, complete w/ AP game recaps, via Yahoo. It's impressive reading.

Yes! Yes! More butts, please!

then he helps them all get the feeling for the butt wiggle by putting his hands on each pitcher's hip, one by one and moving them around slowly in a circle, round and round—

Now this I would like to see!
Thank you Johan for...well, just being you and being with us!
We (heart) you!

I love our pitching.. but I have to say that I respectfully disagree with BG and Johan attempting to teach the rest of the staff the butt wiggle. Surely none will be able to achieve the motion with the grace and ease with which our sexy Johan manages. He is unique and his delivery is unimmitateable.

Now, while the butt wiggle would probably look pretty funny on my chicken-legged boyfriend, Mr Nathan, I must say that he is also stupendously hot and has made that sexy grunt his own.

I'm all for individuality and hottness amongst our boys on the mound.

I'm not sure Twitchy McXanax could pull off a good butt wiggle. It would probably just be dismissed as more twitching.

I would like to watch BWP though...

...imagining BWP....mmmm....

Whew! Is it getting hot in here?

k-bro

If Santana doesn't win the Cy Young, I don't know what I'm going to do. First in ERA, first in strike outs, first in opponent's batting average, first in opponent's on base percentage, first in opponent's slugging percentage, first in opponent's OPS, first in K/9, and first in mother trucking WHIP. If anyone takes 5 minutes to pull up the stats at ESPN.com, it's absurdly obvious that Santana has been the best pitcher in the AL this year.

Another thing of note, from a Yahoo sports article linked in my name:

-------------

...some view the Cy Young as a pitchers' most valuable player award - weighing each pitcher's contribution to team success.

"That's kind of how I look at it,'' said Scott Carter of the Tampa Tribune, who gives Colon the edge for his late charge that helped put the Angels on the brink of contention - even after witnessing Colon get knocked around by the Devil Rays on Sunday. "This year is going to favor Colon because of the same circumstances that Santana had (in his favor) last year.''

------------

Now, here's the thing. I actually took the two minutes to look up Colon's stats, more specifically his stats before and after the All Star game. Colon has actually pitched *worse* since the All Star break than before it. Johan, on the other hand, has once again improved his pitching dramatically once the pennant race kicked in. Unfortunately the team pulled up lame in this year's pennant race.

Something else of note. Seven times this year Johan has given up 2 or fewer runs and has failed to get a win. Two of those times he actually got a loss! Three times he has given up 3 runs and failed to get a win. That's a staggering 10 (!) quality starts that have failed to produce a win for Johan, while two of them gave him a loss.

This year's Cy Young vote should be like a final test for voters. Anyone that votes for Colon is obviously incapable of looking at these matters properly, and his voting right should be revoked. The *only* case you can make for Colon is that he has a better team around him than Santana. How that makes him the Cy Young winner is beyond me.

*takes deep breath* Alright, enough stats. My apologies.

Dear Mr. Will,

Not at all. You are wielding those stats with good purpose, and Batgirl, for one, applauds you.

Sincerely,
BG

Okay, ladies, just so I can join in the drooling.....who the heck is BWP?

Puzzled

Dear Will:

Please write to every sports writer you can think of. You state a very sound case.

Dear Dr. Jane:

BWP is not who; but what. Butt Wiggling Practice.

Dear Batgirl:

So if the batters should happen to take naked batting practice, would the pitchers need to take naked butt wiggling practice?

k-bro

If they sell tickets to NBWP or NBP - I am so there!! All the money could go to Let's get a BIG BAT in the middle of the Line-up Fund =)

Much Love
Wonder Woman

I'm practically old enough to be Johan's mom. Even so,his wiggle makes me weak in the knees. The only thing better than the wiggle is the way he stalks off the mound after a strike-out.

Dear BG

I understand that you fell indeserving of Mr. Santana, I, as a Yankee fan, do feel that we deserve a pitcher of his talents and would like to know if we could borrow him for the remainder of the season and the play-offs. We promise to not let the white sox win the world series if you lend us Johan for a few weeks.

Requestingly Yours
mike

Mike,

No. You can't have him. He's ours.

Protectingly,
Candace

As a side note, I'd totally buy tickets to BWP...NBWP or NBP....any of the three. And Johan's little butt wiggle makes me happy.

Somebody else sees the butt wiggle? Oh thank GOD!

Here I thought I was going crazy.

Also, note that Nathan generally will go to his cap after a pitch. He'll throw the ball, and then adjust his cap almost immediately after.

It's nothing like the butt wiggle. But it's just as funny. As usually he does it right after he's burned a strike past a batter. Sorta like: "Woah that pitch was so good it almost knocked me over. Let me fix my cap before sending that one again."

I find it amusingly remarkable that Yankees and Mariners and even White Sox fans come to this site. Do any of y'all go to other teams' sites? The sad truth, I suspect, is that they all secretly wish they could be Twins fans - they know innately that, regardless of record or playoff wins or ballpark hideousness, the Twins are an intrinsically superior team to their hapless, hopelss bands of mercenaries. This, my friends, is the glistening hope to which we must cling in these dark hours; the deep-seated faith that our boys are simply better men, better people, than those other terrible, nasty fellows could ever hope to be. That kind of quality is not measured in wins or losses - no! It is delineated by a kind word, an autograph at the end of a trying day, an all-night vigil on a suburban lawn (you'll always be a Twin to me, Corey), a warm smile at Target Photo Night. This is why I love the Twins. Yes, another World Series would be lovely, but I can honestly say that I am proud of my team and what they represent. I am proud that we have no Barry Bonds, no Gary Sheffield, no Juan Gonzales. (This is, of course, why The Boone was a tragic mistake. Guys like that just don't fit with the Twins, and never have. Except maybe for Jack Morris.) Am I trying desperately to feel better about a hideous, painful 2005 campaign? Sure I am. But I'm still willing to accept third place if it means we don't abandon our character - and that we have not lost.

Oh, and I'm pretty glad we still have Santana, Radke, Hunter, Mauer, Nathan, and Silva. That's nice, too.

Amen, adidasman, amen.

Dear Adidasman

As I have said more then once, I come here because of Batgirl's talent, not because of the Twins. She is an amazingly gifted writer and has a skill that transcends baseball uniforms and fan allegiances. If there was a person as good as BG doing this for the Yankees I would read them too, but there isn't.

You Twins fans will just have to learn to share Batgirl with all of baseball. Blame ESPN if you need to, they are the ones that exposed her to the masses.

mike

I just thought about this, but...

What if the butt-wiggle was what Johan was doing that "tipped" his pitches earlier this season? "Left, then right = change; right, then left = fastball".

Would you still want him doing it?

I don't believe the Twins have any intrinsic moral superiority, and I hope that fans wouldn't look to baseball players to set their moral compasses. Kirby Puckett should have taught that lesson to every Twins fan.

I'm sure Batgirl deserves full credit for drawing readers from beyond the borders of Twins Territory. The fact that so many people faithfully continue to read her blog even after the Twins' season is long dead and buried just goes to show that the subject is immaterial to her appeal. She could write about anything that strikes her fancy, and I'd read it. Even if she dedicated the blog to Derek Jeter, I would mourn the passing of her taste and standards, but I would still be here because I know she could make even Jeter worship amusing, if not fun.

I confess; this is my first time to Bat Girl's website. A friend sent me...because Johan is, in the words of my husband and children, "my boyfriend." I don't love baseball; my sons do; therefore, I must find something to admire, and it is indeed Johan Santana. Bat Girl, you have made my day.

Methinks Frightwig took my comments a weeeeee bit too seriously, as did Mike. I guess I'll have to make the humor even broader next time so even the outworlders can understand it. (Actually, I think Mike is living in denial. Yankees fans have many things, but they surely crave the unflappable, indomitable spirit that inhabits the Twins. However, as a gesture of goodwill, I offer to the Yankees J.C. Romero, in exchange for Robinson Cano and a bagful of baseballs.)

I will return the goodwill by offering you Kevin Brown and Bernie Williams for Johan Santana and Torii Hunter, I'll even throw in some Nathan's hot dogs.

Hmmmmm...let's see. Two overpriced, well-past-their-prime cripples in exchange for the best pitcher and best center fielder in all of baseball. I'm sure that deal seems like a good one in some distant land, but here in America, I'd call that less than generous. Geez, I wouldn't even trade J.C. Hissyfit for Brown and Bernie...

Dear Mr. Man,

I'm pretty sure Mike is kidding.

Sincerely,
BG

Dear Ms. Girl,

We can only hope.

With deep affection,
adidasman