JOSE RAFAEL DE LOS SANTOS
12/10/86; NDFA '03; Dominican Republic
R/R; 6-0, 155
| Level |
W-L-Sv |
G |
GS |
IP |
H |
HR |
BB |
K |
BB/9 |
K/9 |
WHIP |
OAVG |
ERA |
| 2004 DSL |
2-3-0 |
15 |
4 |
36.2 |
39 |
1 |
24 |
30 |
5.9 |
7.4 |
1.72 |
.265 |
3.44 |
| 2005
DSL |
3-3-0 |
15 |
10 |
45.1 |
41 |
2 |
28 |
63 |
5.6 |
12.5 |
1.52 |
.237 |
3.57 |
| 2006 R |
0-3-0 |
9 |
8 |
35.2 |
42 |
3 |
15 |
24 |
3.8 |
6.1 |
1.60 |
.307 |
4.04 |
| 2007 A
|
2-2-0 |
7 |
4 |
26.0 |
18 |
0 |
22 |
25 |
7.6 |
8.7 |
1.54 |
.207 |
3.46 |
| 2007 R |
1-5-0 |
8 |
8 |
35.2 |
44 |
0 |
4 |
38 |
1.0 |
9.6 |
1.35 |
.286 |
4.29 |
| 2008
A |
3-10-0 |
26 |
26 |
117.0 |
121 |
20 |
70 |
88 |
5.4 |
6.8 |
1.63 |
.269 |
5.77 |
| 2009 A |
0-3-1 |
14 |
8 |
32.1 |
29 |
1 |
35 |
23 |
9.7 |
6.4 |
2.00 |
.254 |
6.68 |
Baseball America in late 2006 tabbed de los Santos as a potentially good prospect. That would have been a welcome change for the Pirates' fruitless Latin American scouting efforts under Dave Littlefield. De los Santos throws a low-90s fastball, a slider and a change. His stuff is good, as shown by his K rate in his second DSL season, but he's battled control problems. He spent 2006 in the rotation at Bradenton and didn't pitch very well. He returned there in 2007 and got hit fairly hard, but walked almost nobody and fanned over a batter an inning. The Pirates moved him up to Hickory, where he served as a swing man. This time he didn't get hit much and couldn't throw strikes, with the one constant being that he still had a good K rate. He stayed in the Hickory rotation all of 2008 and the results weren't pretty. Although he was occasionally dominant, more often he was undone by control problems and gopher balls. His final two starts were characteristic of his erratic season. In his next-to-last start, he went five innings and allowed no runs and one walk while fanning eight. The very next start he walked seven and fanned only one in four innings. The control problems grew over the season-he walked 24 in 63.1 IP in his first thirteen starts, 46 in 53.2 in his last thirteen-and his ERA also got much worse after the first two months. Fatigue may have been a factor, as his inning total nearly doubled from his previous high. For some reason, LH batters hit 100 points lower against him than RH batters.
De los Santos opened 2009 on the DL and didn't appear with West Virginia until late June. The Pirates tried to bring him along slowly, with shortened starts, but he couldn't throw strikes. In 26.2 IP as a starter, he walked 30. They eventually tried him in short relief, sometimes less than an inning. He still walked five in 5.2 IP, although he fanned ten. Overall, he continued to have a reverse platoon split. Despite all the problems, de los Santos still allowed fewer than a hit per inning overall, so it appears he still has good stuff. He'll only be 23 at the start of 2010, so if he's healthy it remains possible he could turn things around.
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